Public Health

A new study published in Nature Medicine looks directly at the human health impacts from severe weather like hurricanes, floods, and intense storms. Using Medicare records before and after weather disasters that incurred more than $1 billion of damages from 2011 to 2016, researchers found that six weeks after a storm, the death rate in counties with the greatest destruction was 2 to 4 times higher than in less impacted areas.

A recent U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report concludes that the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to wildfire smoke is “ad hoc,” poorly resourced and muddled by a lack of coordination with other agencies. The new GAO report highlights how an “Exceptional Events” rule loophole in the Clean Air Act allows local regulators to make a case that air pollution from “natural” wildfires shouldn’t count against their federal air quality goals. Thus, erasing some of the worst air-pollution days pollution — not from the sky, but from the record.

Extreme heat has been a concern in Southern California for decades as temperatures continue to rise. In the City of Los Angeles, an effort to provide bus stop shade for public transit riders--who tend to be people of color—demonstrates a long-standing challenge in all levels of government: inability to work across departments.

Juan Moreno Haines writes from inside San Quentin Prison in https://www.kneedeeptimes.org/imprisoned-with-climate-change/ on the impacts of climate change on the incarcerated; an extremely vulnerable population that often goes unrecognized.

An article published today in the New York Times highlights the results of a new national survey, which shows that Americans' concerns about climate change have not been diminished by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. On the contrary, the survey found that acceptance of the reality of climate change is at a record high in some cases.