WASHINGTON — An already record-setting summer heat wave will continue through August and will put more than 51 million Americans at risk of health impacts, according to new data from federal health officials.
Most of those vulnerable people live in 26 states and are expected to have at least five extreme heat days this month. Among the highest-risk counties, roughly 45% have high levels of uninsured adults and children and 18% have high senior populations, according to a relatively new monthly report drafted by the Health and Human Services Department’s two-year-old climate change office.
The southwestern regions of California, Arizona, and Texas and a swath of the Northwest including rural Idaho and Montana could see half of the month at dangerous heat levels. There will be fewer extreme heat days for most of the East Coast after record temperatures and unprecedented wildfire smog earlier in the summer, but it is still the hottest summer on record across the nation.
“It has been a shocking summer in many ways,” said John Balbus, acting director of the HHS climate change and health equity office. “We have all kinds of phenomena happening that are either extremely rare or unprecedented.”
Those include record nighttime temperatures across the country, wildfire-caused air pollution throughout the Northeast and unprecedented water temperatures in the south. This July — determined the hottest on record before the month even ended — heat-related emergency room visits surged by 20% to 50% across the county and the Southwest in particular, Balbus said. Nationwide, temperatures will, on average, be 3.6 degrees higher than usual through October.
The most commonly reported risks of extreme heat and air pollution include asthma, heart attacks, COPD, and heat stroke. But scientists have pressed the government to launch more comprehensive studies into their long-term impacts, particularly on aging and mental health, through the National Institutes of Health, or even cost analyses through Medicare and Medicaid programs.
For instance, researchers in England have already suggested that higher temperatures correlate to increased dementia-related hospital admissions.
Balbus insists there is a definite mental health link as well.
“The rates of suicide, depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are skyrocketing. And it’s not just because of climate change, but we know that anytime this population is asked about climate change, it is clearly a source of severe distress,” he said. “People are deciding not to have children, people are worried about their future.”
However the prospect for additional health department funding towards climate change research is bleak. The Democrat-controlled Senate Appropriations committee has already approved a 2024 spending bill that would keep the HHS climate budget stagnant with $10 million allotted for the CDC to assist states and tribes as they “identify possible health effects associated with a changing climate and implement health adaptation plans.” It does not provide the $5 million requested by President Biden to fund Balbus’ office or its smaller environmental justice arm.
The House GOP-led budget proposal slashes CDC’s budget by 18% in part by eliminating the climate change initiative, which committee leadership called a “controversial” program, along with firearms research.
This year’s budget could be Biden’s last change to channel more funds to the health agency’s climate change office.
“I think it’s a proven fact that the impacts of climate change are affecting the health of Americans and people around the world,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told Senate appropriators in March when asked to defend the agency’s funding request.
Besides heat and wildfire projections, the new Climate Health Outlook lays out regional risks of drought and West Nile virus, a mosquito-borne illness spread mostly during warm months.
Balbus says that the monthly outlook should fill a “special niche” in public health officials’ and health systems’ preparedness by providing weather service-like projections tailored to health care needs. The HHS office is “getting close to” launching an interactive, geospatial platform that can drill down to county-level risks and vulnerable populations, he added.
“We have to acknowledge that we’re seeing manifestations of climate change,” he said. “The kind of heat we’re seeing is likely to get more intense before it gets better.”