Most recent 40 articles: Yale Climate Connections - Health
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Don’t sleep on soot - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 21) |
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Nov 21 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Somesh Roy was about 10 years old when he discovered a history book depicting ancient cave paintings. The images captivated him. Inside his home in West Bengal, India, which lacked electricity, he used candlelight to gawk at the pages after dark.
“I knew I was going to be a historian when I grew up,” Roy says, flashing a smile to acknowledge his unconventional path. “Of course, if you’re going to be a historian, you become an engineer.”
Working both in the lab and classroom at Marquette University in Milwaukee, the mechanical engineer has carved ... Read more ...
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Up to 20% of lung cancer patients never smoked - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 14) |
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Nov 14 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
More than 200,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with lung cancer every year. And smoking is not always to blame.
Gomez: “Approximately 10-20% of patients who have lung cancer are never-smokers.”
Jorge Gomez is an oncologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
He says that several environmental risk factors contribute to lung cancer in nonsmokers.
Some of the biggest are secondhand smoke and radon. But air pollution - caused in part by burning fossil fuels - has also been linked to the ... Read more ...
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Unhoused people are especially vulnerable to wildfire smoke - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 9) |
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Nov 9 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
When dangerous wildfire smoke fills the air, public health agencies issue warnings to keep people safe.
Kasdin: “The first thing we hear is for people to go inside, close their windows. And those are simply things that are not a possibility for people living on the streets.”
Lucy Kasdin directs Alameda County Health Care for the Homeless in California’s Bay Area.
She says unhoused people have a hard time escaping the smoke.
They’re also more likely to suffer from health conditions - such as asthma and COPD - that increase the danger ... Read more ...
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Five ways climate change makes it harder for doctors to help their patients - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 2) |
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Nov 2 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Burns from contact with hot pavement can be difficult to treat and can take a long time to heal.
Dr. Joanne Leovy, a family physician who has practiced in Las Vegas, Nevada, for nearly 22 years, recently talked through a case with a physician-in-training who was treating one such burn injury this summer. An unhoused man - released from the emergency department after receiving treatment for a psychiatric condition - was brought back to the emergency room less than two hours later with severe burns on his feet after contact with a scorching hot sidewalk. Read more ...
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Climate change is making fall allergy season last weeks longer - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Oct 31) |
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Oct 31 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In late summer and early fall, when the ragweed plant is in bloom, people with allergies often suffer from congestion, a runny nose, and itchy eyes.
Bridgette Jones is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Missouri Kansas City School of Medicine and an allergist at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.
Jones: “I usually tell my patients that we start to see ragweed around the back-to-school time, so usually in August, and then the ragweed usually clears from the air when it starts to get really cold after we’ve gotten ... Read more ...
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New books and reports about climate change and your health - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Oct 30) |
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Oct 30 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
After a hot, smoky summer that made the health hazards posed by climate change painfully clear, we concluded that it was time to provide an updated selection of books and reports on climate change, medicine, and public health. (Earlier lists were published in 2019 and 2017.)
This new selection begins with three global overviews, two of which are available as free downloads.
The next three titles are more tightly focused on the health challenges climate change poses both for our children and older adults and on how support networks and ... Read more ...
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Wildfire smoke can infiltrate your home, even when windows are closed - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Oct 10) |
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Oct 10 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In recent years, wildfire smoke has brought hazy, orange skies to many American cities.
Breathing this smoke can be hazardous to your health, so people are encouraged to stay indoors when the air quality is poor.
But staying inside may not be enough to keep you safe.
Ethan Walker of the University of Montana was part of a team that studied the air quality in 20 Montana homes during the 2022 wildfire season.
“Some homes had pretty good air quality indoors through the wildfire season, and others, we found that air pollution indoors was ... Read more ...
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People with Alzheimer’s disease face higher risks in heat waves - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Oct 4) |
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Oct 4 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Millions of Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, and they may be especially vulnerable when it’s hot.
Howard Chang is at Emory University Rollins School of Public Health. His team analyzed hospital data from California, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, and New York.
They found that when summer temperatures were high for three days in a row, people were more likely to visit the emergency department.
That was true for those with Alzheimer’s and the general population.
“But if you look at the degree of impact, we see that the ... Read more ...
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Gun violence rises with the temperature - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Oct 3) |
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Oct 3 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
As cities try to reduce gun violence, they may face an unexpected roadblock: heat.
A recent study finds that hotter-than-normal days come with a higher risk of shootings.
“I think the key finding from the study is that almost 7% of shootings in U.S. cities are attributable to daily temperature differences,” says Jonathan Jay, a public health researcher at Boston University and one of the study authors.
The exact link between heat and gun violence is not yet clear, but Jay says that when it’s hot and people are uncomfortable, they’re more ... Read more ...
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Electric vehicles may improve a community’s health - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Sep 27) |
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Sep 27 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Electric vehicles are widely promoted as a climate solution. But they can also be a public health solution because, unlike gas-powered cars, electric vehicles do not emit harmful tailpipe pollution.
Erika Garcia of the University of Southern California was part of a team that studied the health benefits of transitioning to electric vehicles.
“We found that within ZIP codes, over time, greater increases in the number of zero-emission vehicles was associated with lower rates of asthma emergency department visits,” she says.
Garcia’s colleague ... Read more ...
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Feeling anxious about climate change? Check out these strategies. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Sep 25) |
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Sep 25 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Thinking about climate change is no fun. Indeed, it can be downright painful. But as climate disasters grow more obvious and immediate, the topic keeps getting harder to ignore. So many of us need to cope again and again with uncomfortable emotions.
Here are some especially useful perspectives and tools for this recurring and important task.
Anger, sadness, guilt, hope: on the complex emotions of climate change. Hannah Ritchie, Sustainability by Numbers (newsletter). Subhead: “It’s perfectly normal to cycle through a range of emotions when ... Read more ...
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After a Pittsburgh coal processing plant closed, ER visits plummeted - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Aug 31) |
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Aug 31 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Pittsburgh, in its founding, was blessed and cursed with two abundant natural resources: free-flowing rivers and a nearby coal seam. Their presence made the city’s 20th-century status as a coal-fired, steel-making powerhouse possible. It also threw so much toxic smoke in the air that the town was once described as “hell with the lid off.”
Though air quality laws strengthened over the decades, pollution in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County has remained high, ranking among the 25 worst metro areas in the United States for fine, easy-to-inhale ... Read more ...
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Community and free clinics can help vulnerable patients prepare for extreme weather - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Aug 22) |
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Aug 22 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Community health centers and free clinics serve patients who are especially vulnerable to climate change. Many have chronic conditions that put them at higher risk during extreme heat.
“And many of the patients also work outdoors … so they are faced with extreme weather, even when, for most people, they’re able to escape,” says Saqi Maleque Cho of Americares, a health-focused relief and development organization.
Her group recently worked with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to create a tool kit for clinics.
It includes ... Read more ...
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What new data reveal about how hurricanes kill - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Aug 9) |
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Aug 9 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our newsletters.
Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
On Tuesday, new research released by the National Hurricane Center underscored the threat posed by water in hurricanes - finding that over the past decade, rainfall flooding has accounted for nearly 60% of all U.S. deaths from tropical cyclones.
Though previous research concluded storm surge - seawater pushed ashore by the strong winds of a hurricane - accounted for nearly half of all U.S. tropical cyclone deaths from 1963-2012, since 2013 storm surge has been ... Read more ...
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For unhoused people in America’s hottest large city, heat waves are a merciless killer - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jul 24) |
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Jul 24 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
“I’ve been down here far too many years,” Shy said with resignation but no self-pity. “It’s not a pretty sight.”
Arms crossed, the 40-year-old Oregon native stood in front of the rough shelter she had built out of plastic tarps, discarded carpets, and a piece of felt the size of an SUV, all attached by carabiners and twine to an old Coleman tent with holes in the side.
But Shy wasn’t talking about the other jury-rigged structures, beater bikes, or scattered piles of trash surrounding her. She was referring to the daily struggle to survive in the ... Read more ...
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Flu-like valley fever is on the rise. There’s a climate connection. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jul 13) |
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Jul 13 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Valley fever is a flu-like illness that’s growing increasingly common across hot, dry regions of California and the Southwest.
In 2019, about 20,000 cases of valley fever were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That’s about seven times more cases than were reported just 20 years ago.
Daniel Tong is an associate professor at George Mason University. He explains that valley fever is caused by inhaling a soil-dwelling fungus called coccidioides.
“What we know is that soil is the place the fungus will grow,” he says. Read more ...
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Extreme heat will cost the U.S. $1 billion in health care costs - this summer alone - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jul 10) |
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Jul 10 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Extreme heat - summertime temperatures and humidity that exceed the historical average - is being made more frequent and intense by climate change. In the first two weeks of June, a late-spring hot spell prompted schools in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Great Lakes areas to close or send students home early. A heat wave broke temperature records in Puerto Rico - the heat index, a measure of how temperatures feel to the human body, reached 125 degrees Fahrenheit on parts of the island. And extreme heat spurred deadly storms and power outages for hundreds ... Read more ...
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Dust storms are on the rise in the Southwest. That could harm health. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jul 5) |
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Jul 5 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
As the climate warms, parts of the American Southwest are experiencing more frequent dust storms.
“What happens is there is a mixture of drought or dry conditions, higher temperatures, and reduced soil moisture, as well as wind, that come together and create these giant walls of sand and dust,” says Dr. Caitlin Rublee, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Colorado.
She says these events are harmful to human health. The airborne particles can hurt people’s eyes, airways, and lungs.
“In severe circumstances, ... Read more ...
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Rising sea levels will isolate people long before they’re underwater - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jul 3) |
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Jul 3 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
The Chignecto Isthmus - the low marshy strip connecting New Brunswick and Nova Scotia - may be one of the most vulnerable places in Canada to sea level rise. At just 21 kilometers wide, the interprovincial land bridge is battered on its southwestern flank by the famously extreme tides in the Bay of Fundy. Protected by a network of earthen dikes first constructed in the 1600s, “the tops of the dikes are only a little higher than the spring high tides,” says Jeff Ollerhead, a coastal geomorphologist at Mount Allison University, located in Sackville, New ... Read more ...
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How climate change harms children’s health - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jun 29) |
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Jun 29 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
The fondest times of my childhood were the annual burst of flowers each spring. Not so for my kids, who sniffle and sneeze their way through pollen season.
With average temperatures growing warmer, trees here in Atlanta are flowering earlier in the year, blooming longer, and releasing more pollen than when I was a kid.
That’s led to what I have dubbed FOGO - “Fear of Going Outside” - for my children.
They live with weeks of nasal congestion, sleepless nights, tears, frustration, missed days of school, poor performance on spring tests, and ... Read more ...
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Mosquito that can carry viral infections spreads northward in U.S. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jun 28) |
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Jun 28 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In Florida, Texas, and other parts of the South, a flower pot or a tire sitting in a yard could house unwelcome guests: mosquito eggs of the species Aedes aegypti.
It’s the type of mosquito that transmits dengue, Zika, and yellow fever.
Roxanne Connelly of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is an expert in mosquito-borne diseases.
“These eggs are drought resistant and they can survive up to several months,” she says. “Once those eggs are covered with water, whether it’s from rainfall or a sprinkler, the eggs will hatch ... Read more ...
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A father and son take a bike trip inspired by climate change - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jun 16) |
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Jun 16 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Sixteen-year-old John Bramson of North Carolina grew up taking bike rides with his dad, Brian.
“You know, Sunday mornings or Saturday mornings to go grab breakfast. So biking was a big thing for our family,” John Bramson says.
This year, the father and son embarked on their biggest outing yet: a weeklong trek from the Outer Banks of North Carolina to Richmond, Virginia.
They were motivated by their concern about climate change. The Bramsons worked with the nonprofit Climate Ride, which helps people organize bike rides that benefit ... Read more ...
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Students push for climate education at medical schools - Yale Climate Connections - Health (May 04, 2023) |
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May 04, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In 2018, the Camp Fire devastated parts of northern California. Dangerous smoke filled the skies of San Francisco more than 150 miles away.
At the time Karly Hampshire was a first-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco.
“We were walking to school every day in N95 masks through this really hazy, creepy, eerie dusk,” she says. “But despite the fact that we were in our respiratory health block at the time, there was really no mention of the health effects of climate change. And that felt like a real disconnect in our ... Read more ...
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‘In every breath we take’: How climate change impacts pollen allergies - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Apr 19, 2023) |
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Apr 19, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
When spring arrives, as many as 81 million Americans experience seasonal allergies. And as the planet warms and more carbon dioxide is pumped into the atmosphere, climate change is lengthening pollen seasons and making them more severe.
Worsening allergies are “a really clear example of how climate change is impacting us now, every spring, in every breath that we take. This is climate change in our own backyards, in our own towns and cities. It’s not future generations or other countries or future decades,” said William Anderegg, an associate ... Read more ...
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Global warming can aggravate multiple sclerosis symptoms. Here’s what you can do. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Apr 03, 2023) |
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Apr 03, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Strange weather in Los Angeles in February 2023 may have led to a spike in symptoms for people with multiple sclerosis, and Dr. Barbara Giesser’s practice was flooded with calls.
“The weather has been a little bit weird. It’s been rainy, and got actually pretty hot, and then got cold,” said Giesser, a neurologist and multiple sclerosis specialist with the Pacific Neuroscience Institute. “I’ve been hearing from a lot of patients, you know: 'My feet are numb and tingly. I’ve had it before but it’s worse this week, or my balance is ... Read more ...
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Wildfire smoke brings breathtaking sunsets - and asthma attacks - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Mar 20, 2023) |
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Mar 20, 2023 · Take the Yale Climate Connections audience survey today.
Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
In 2020, wildfires throughout the Western U.S. blanketed the country in smoke from coast to coast. People as far away as New York, Boston, and Washington were photographing exceptionally brilliant sunsets and posting them on social media. But the same smoke that tinted the sun a brilliant orange was tainting lungs, with 50 times more people in the U.S. exposed to dangerous levels of wildfire smoke than 10 years earlier.
Wildfires, much like storms such as hurricanes, are increasing in ... Read more ...
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The little-known physical and mental health benefits of urban trees - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 28, 2023) |
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Feb 28, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
A 2020 Pew poll found that 90% of Americans support planting trees as a method to curb climate change. The climate benefits of trees are simple to understand: About half of a tree’s dry weight is composed of carbon, which trees extract from the atmosphere as they grow.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, forests in the United States remove about 800 million tons of climate-warming carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. That includes close to 45 million tons specifically from “urban forests” - a term that encompasses a wide variety ... Read more ...
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Climate change is increasing the risk of infectious diseases worldwide - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 22, 2023) |
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Feb 22, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
Heat waves, floods, droughts, and rising temperatures fueled by climate change have made the world more vulnerable to disease outbreaks and the spread of a wide variety of pathogens - from bacteria and viruses to fungi and protozoa.
Climate change has already increased the risk of nearly 60% of all known infectious diseases, including tick- and mosquito-borne diseases - like Lyme disease and dengue - and various food- and waterborne infections, according to an analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The risks will grow as summers ... Read more ...
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Ventura County, California, offers wildfire alerts in four languages often spoken by farmworkers - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 09, 2023) |
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Feb 09, 2023 · Stay in the know about climate impacts and solutions. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Yale Climate Connections
During the Thomas Fire in 2017, Eulalia Mendoza was working in strawberry fields in Ventura County, California.
As smoke and ash drifted into the area, she breathed it in - even after the fire was out.”
“There was still ash in the field and it would still be coming into our eyes or we would still be spitting it out,” she says.
Mendoza spoke through a translator, Ariadne Villegas of the Public Health Institute. The group is working with the Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project and others to protect farmworkers’ health.
Mendoza ... Read more ...
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How listening to women can boost disaster relief efforts - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 08, 2023) |
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Feb 08, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
In 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the coastal town of Loíza, in Puerto Rico.
A local nonprofit stepped up to support disaster-relief efforts, and they started by talking to women.
“We women are leading communities. Women are taking care of kids. Women are taking care of elder bedridden people,” says Jenifer De Jesús Soto of Taller Salud, a nonprofit focused on women’s health and violence reduction.
She says because women are often caregivers, they frequently know who is most vulnerable and what their communities need in an emergency.
So Taller Salud partnered with women on the ground to distribute food, water, infant formula, ... Read more ...
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A double whammy: Wildfire debris pollutes drinking water - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 03, 2023) |
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Feb 03, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
The largest wildfire in New Mexico’s state history burned over 300,000 acres in the summer of 2022 and came within a mile of the town of Las Vegas. The flames ultimately spared the town of 13,000, but months later, ash and soot left by the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak wildfire fouled drinking water there when monsoon rains blanketed the region, paradoxically slamming Las Vegas with both flooding and a municipal water shortage.
Four people drowned in flash floods, and residents were forced to erect sandbag barriers to protect their houses. Meanwhile, the inundation overwhelmed the town’s water filtration system with ash contamination, forcing ... Read more ...
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Climate justice organization tackles urban heat and more in Arizona’s Maricopa county - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Feb 01, 2023) |
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Feb 01, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
[en Español]
Heat is a serious problem in Arizona, especially in Phoenix - one of the fastest-warming cities in the U.S. Climate change is making it hotter, with temperatures climbing as high as 118 degrees Fahrenheit on recent summer days.
That heat comes at a cost. Residents of the Phoenix metropolitan area spend about $7.3 million every year in emergency room visits and hospitalizations due to heat-related illnesses, according to a 2021 economic assessment commissioned by the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit environmental organization. Socially vulnerable populations - people without vehicles, with disabilities, older adults, those who ... Read more ...
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Study finds vast disparities in how heat affects Phoenix residents - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jan 31, 2023) |
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Jan 31, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
In Phoenix, Arizona, temperatures exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit more than 100 days each year, and the city is rapidly warming.
No one can entirely avoid the heat. But Melissa Guardaro of Arizona State University says there are vast disparities in how it affects people.
In a recent study, she interviewed about two dozen residents about their experiences of heat.
Some reported no trouble coping. They can afford to constantly run their air conditioners. And when they leave their homes, they drive to air-conditioned jobs.
“Their life is really not impacted,” she says. “So it’s just really an inconvenience.”
But for many ... Read more ...
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Extreme rainfall exacerbates pollution threat from Oklahoma Superfund site - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jan 30, 2023) |
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Jan 30, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
For generations, the ground beneath Ottawa County, Oklahoma, was mined for lead and zinc.
The mines closed half a century ago, but some of the pollution they created remains.
In the 90s, almost a third of children living nearby had unhealthy levels of lead in their blood. And despite cleanup efforts by the EPA, heavy metal contamination still plagues some areas.
“Tar Creek is an 11-mile creek that … runs through one of the largest lead and zinc abandoned mine sites,” says Rebecca Jim of LEAD Agency, an environmental justice group.
She says mounds of mining waste - up to 200 feet high - still sit along the creek bank.
When ... Read more ...
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Breathe easier during wildfire season with this inexpensive air filter - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jan 16, 2023) |
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Jan 16, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
Breathing wildfire smoke can make you wheeze and cough. And it can trigger health emergencies - especially in people who have preexisting heart or lung conditions. So it’s critical to avoid smoky air.
“Staying inside is what we often try to tell people, but staying inside isn’t always enough,” says Addison Houston of Seattle and King County, Washington’s public health department.
He says smoke can enter your home, so it’s important to filter the indoor air.
One option is to buy a HEPA - or high-efficiency particulate air - filter. But Houston says you can also build your own inexpensive, DIY solution.
All it takes is a ... Read more ...
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Wildfire smoke getting into your home? Build a DIY Corsi-Rosenthal air filter. - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jan 16, 2023) |
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Jan 16, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
As climate change makes wildfires more extreme, people are increasingly living with smoke. The number of people residing in areas that experience at least one day of dangerous smoke pollution per year has increased 27-fold over the last decade, according to research led by Stanford scientists.
A DIY air purifier called a Corsi-Rosenthal box can help clean the air in your home, making it safer for you and your family to breathe. The boxes cost under $100 to build, less than half the price of commercial air filter units.
The design was originally created by Richard Corsi, the dean of engineering at the University of California, Davis, and Jim ... Read more ...
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Older adults can be particularly vulnerable during weather disasters - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Jan 03, 2023) |
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Jan 03, 2023 · Yale Climate Connections
When extreme weather strikes, older adults can be especially vulnerable.
They’re more likely to lack reliable transportation or have medical issues that make it hard to evacuate.
“They’re more likely to have a diminished social circle. They might not be as attuned to certain channels of communication by which warnings go out,” says Jason Rhoades of the Center for Climate Preparedness and Community Resilience at Antioch University New England.
He’s been running focus groups with seniors to understand how best to keep them safe.
He says it’s important to engage older adults in resilience planning and to work with people and ... Read more ...
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More than half of infectious diseases may be aggravated by climate change - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 21, 2022) |
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Nov 21, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Malaria, E. coli, cholera - humans are vulnerable to a wide range of infectious diseases.
A recent study looked at 375 diseases known to have impacted people, and it found that more than half can be aggravated by hazards affected by global warming.
“Over 58% of the diseases can be affected by climatic changes,” says Camilo Mora of the University of Hawai’i.
His team reviewed tens of thousands of scientific papers to identify cases in which heat waves, floods, droughts, and other climate hazards have made diseases worse.
For example, warmer temperatures and heavy rain can allow some pathogens - like West Nile virus and Vibrio - ... Read more ...
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Experts discuss how wildfire smoke harms human health - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 17, 2022) |
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Nov 17, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
Wildfires in the summer of 2022 burned in the New Mexico mountains ringing the valley where Marquel Musgrave lives. Musgrave’s pueblo, Nanbé Owingeh, sprang into action. Community members gathered information and supplies to protect children and elders from the smoky air.
Musgrave described this experience and more during a November panel discussion hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Communication and Yale Climate Connections focusing on the health consequences of wildfire smoke. Musgrave joined Dr. Colleen Reid, a professor of geography at the University of Colorado Boulder, who shared recent research on the effects that breathing in ... Read more ...
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After the deluge - cascading effects of extreme weather on human health - Yale Climate Connections - Health (Nov 16, 2022) |
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Nov 16, 2022 · Yale Climate Connections
News coverage of this summer’s devastating flood in Pakistan has peaked, but the deluge left behind hasn’t subsided: Experts predict the floodwaters could take six months to fully recede.
The initial damage was devastating. More than 1,500 people died - about half of them children - when record rainfalls and melting glaciers caused catastrophic flooding during the 2022 monsoon season.
But the flooding’s human impacts will be far more long-lasting. Eight million people are still displaced, and Pakistan now faces ongoing threats to lives and livelihoods - the floods affected 15% of the country’s rice crop and 40% of its cotton ... Read more ...
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