Heat can be deadly, killing more people every year than other weather hazards. But as warmer days become our new normal – or, as some climate scientists say, our “new abnormal” – the ill effects of higher temperatures on our bodies could last much longer than you might think.
The World Health Organization says climate change is “the greatest threat to human health.” And while that may sound exaggerated, experts say it’s really not that far-fetched.
“There are really direct relationships between climate and health, and what we’re seeing in many cases we could call ‘climate-exacerbated diseases,’” Dr. Christopher Tedeschi, director of emergency preparedness for emergency medicine at Columbia University, told Yahoo News. .
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Why extreme heat is bad for your health right now
If you walk outside on an oppressively hot day, it’s easy to see how excessive heat can cause immediate damage. Heat stroke and heat exhaustion may be the first ailments that come to mind. Sunstroke, which occurs when the body loses its ability to cool and control its temperature, can cause permanent disability and even death, with body temperatures potentially rising to 106°F or higher in less than 15 minutes. Heat exhaustion, which includes symptoms such as dizziness, nausea and headaches, can lead to heat stroke unless treated immediately.
But extreme heat can also be harmful in less obvious ways and have a major impact on chronic diseases.
“Heat puts stress on your body, and when your body is stressed, it has trouble dealing with other things, like heart disease or respiratory disease,” Tedeschi said. “For example, if you look at emergency room visits during times of extreme heat, there are more people coming in with heart attacks, more people coming in with strokes, and that’s honestly just a reflection of the stress on the body.”
Higher temperatures also often lead to poorer air quality, with extreme heat and stagnant air increasing the amount of ozone and particulate pollution. And after you’ve endured scorching heat, all that heat can also wreak havoc on your sleep, with even mild heat exposure maintaining body temperature, affecting sleep stages and interfering with the ability to fall and stay asleep.
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How high temperatures harm your health in the long term
“On an individual level, I think it’s about that heat stress over a longer period of time,” Tedeschi said. “If you’re constantly exposed to extreme heat or high temperatures that your body can’t handle, I think you’re honestly at risk for things that your body might otherwise be able to ward off.”
There are also more downstream effects. Wildfire smoke – which has become an all-too-familiar problem in much of the US as fires in Canada and California continue to smolder – has harmful health effects if these dangerous gases and fine particles are inhaled, and the impact of Poor air quality caused by smoke can also be harmful in the long term.
“There are probably some long-term effects of these small particles that we don’t fully understand yet,” Tedeschi said. “They penetrate deep into the lungs, probably cause more inflammation and may be responsible for more chronic diseases. Combined with the heat, that is a very dangerous combination.”
Heat and drought – which have been linked to climate change – are also prime conditions for a more intense bushfire season, and this is expected to get worse as our planet warms. The Canadian Natural Resources Agency says climate change could double the amount of area burned. every year by the end of this century.
“I think about children who are chronically exposed to poor air quality, and that is definitely a risk for chronic asthma,” Tedeschi said. “If you look at the asthma rates and the heat index and access to green spaces, there’s a lot of correlation. And so I worry, for example, that children, for example, are exposed to poor air quality, so that they either develop respiratory problems or the problems that they already have may become worse over the course of their lives.”
The milder winters and earlier springs that bring ripe wildfire season also give disease-carrying insects like mosquitoes and ticks a chance to thrive longer and expand their habitats into new, warmer corners of the US. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that between 2004 and 2018, the number of reported illnesses due to mosquito, tick and flea bites more than doubled to more than 760,000 reported cases nationwide.
And that’s not the only thing that grows as temperatures rise. The emergence of new, sometimes deadly fungi that can infect humans is now a major concern for the World Health Organization. Dr. Andrej Spec, a fungal infection expert at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, tells Yahoo News, “As we warm up, we lose one of our greatest defenses against fungus: our body temperature.”
Mold, Spec explains, does not do well at 98.6°F – the average body temperature of humans – and thrives at temperatures around 80°F. But more and more cases of extreme heat are eradicating fungi that can only survive in temperate environments, allowing more heat-resistant fungi to thrive.
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The myriad health problems arising from the increasingly extreme heat will also exacerbate another, separate problem caused by the doctors and medical professionals – the shortage of healthcare workers.
“Nationally, our emergency departments are overwhelmed, overburdened and overcrowded,” Tedeschi said. “And if you think about an event that could drive a lot of surplus people to the emergency department, like a heat wave or poor air quality, our emergency room overcrowding is probably one of our biggest risks when it comes to mitigating these climate disasters.”
