Climate change’s big threat: a hotter world

Host Amber Smith: Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, invites you to be The Informed Patient, with the podcast that features experts from Central New York's only academic medical center. I'm your host, Amber Smith.

To learn about how human health is threatened by climate change, I'm talking today with a researcher from Upstate's department of public health and preventive medicine.

Augusta Williams is an assistant professor at Upstate. She earned her doctor of science degree from the Harvard School of Public Health, and her master's degree in environmental health sciences, climate and health comes from Columbia University.

Welcome to "The Informed Patient," Dr. Williams.

Augusta Williams, DSc: Thank you so much for having me.

Host Amber Smith: I'd like to first ask you to explain what impact climate has on our health, and I know there's a lot of different areas you want to cover. Should we start with air pollution?

Augusta Williams, DSc: Sure. Yes, like you said, there are many different pathways through which climate change impacts our health, and we're seeing a lot of these unfolding today, whether that's in different parts of the United States or internationally. For air pollution, this kind of has multiple pathways that it impacts our health. Human-made climate change is driven largely by burning of fossil fuels, and that burning of fossil fuels releases greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, which warm Earth and change our climate, but they also release air pollution, which is harmful to health.

So the longer we're contributing to climate change, the longer we are also dealing with that pollution that harms our health. But on the flip side, there's various climate events like heat and wildfires that also produce more or trap more air pollution in our environment, also harming health. So it's really this double-edged sword of air pollution that we're experiencing these health impacts from.

Host Amber Smith: Now, you mentioned wildfires, and it seems like there's a wildfire every week. California, Texas had huge wildfires. Are we seeing more of those, or does it just feel like it?

Augusta Williams, DSc: We are definitely, and unfortunately, seeing more wildfires in terms of the amount of land and area and people impacted by wildfires.

We're also seeing more days of wildfire smoke. For people who were on the East Coast in the summer of 2023, you may have seen and experienced wildfire smoke to a new level for the very first time. I know that was the first time I personally had experienced such poor air quality due to wildfires located many hundreds of miles away from where I was living.

So it's important to think about those impacts and how that air can travel to other places as well.

Host Amber Smith: So with that air quality being so questionable, people who have asthma or allergies --- that's a big deal for them, right?

Augusta Williams, DSc: It's a huge deal for them. People who have respiratory diseases like asthma or COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), people who have cardiovascular disease or other heart issues, older adults, young children, pregnant individuals -- they're all extremely susceptible to these negative air-quality impacts.

But anybody could be vulnerable to some of the negative health impacts of these different exposures.

Host Amber Smith: I think a lot of people were coughing and irritated when that smoke came, when our skies turned orange. You know, it was weird.

Augusta Williams, DSc: Definitely. I know I could feel my eyes being irritated and burning respiratory impacts from coughing and wheezing.

I have asthma, so could feel those effects being much worse than on a normal day without that exposure. So it's very important that we're all paying attention to our health and the health of our neighbors, friends and family.

Host Amber Smith: I've spoken with your colleagues in global health about tropical diseases that we never saw in the U.S. before, unless someone went away and came back with one, but that we're seeing in the U.S. now, the Zika virus, dengue virus.

Is that all because of climate change?

Augusta Williams, DSc: Climate change is definitely one of the big drivers behind that. When we're seeing things like warmer temperatures, changes in precipitation, those impacts have downstream consequences on our ecosystems.

Whether that's the ecosystems that we as humans depend on, but also the ecosystems of other things like bugs, mosquitoes and ticks that transmit different diseases. We're making the environment potentially more favorable for their survival, for their reproduction for the transmissibility of the diseases they carry, but also the behaviors of humans, who then are outside more potentially interacting with these mosquitoes or ticks.

So that can lead and has been shown to be leading to more vector-borne diseases, whether that's tropical diseases, but also Lyme disease. That's one of the biggest climate health indicators, here in New York state and throughout the Northeast, is seeing just more and more transmission of Lyme disease from ticks.

So being cautious about those activities and checking yourself, getting seen (by a health care provider) at the first sign of different symptoms, is really important.

Host Amber Smith: How is food, our food sources and food security, how is that impacted?

Augusta Williams, DSc: Very similarly to the ecosystem shifts I was talking about previously. As we're changing temperatures, we're seeing more heat waves, we're seeing more droughts, or even on the flip side, too much precipitation with extreme flooding that can threaten our agricultural crops. It can threaten what food we have available globally, nationally, and also the amount of water that's available in certain places.

And when we threaten those things, that impacts the health of communities who depend on those resources. And if that continues for periods of time or multiple geographies, (it) can really take a toll globally on our very much interconnected food and water systems.

Host Amber Smith: We've talked about physical health, but what about mental health?

Augusta Williams, DSc: If you're anything like me when hearing of all these impacts, you might be able to easily see how this could impact your stress, the mental load that people are carrying, having to deal with that. Some have called this "eco-anxiety," where the threat of all of these different changes and seeing them unfolding every day and them being such a big issue to solve can result in this widespread anxiety.

But there's also the risk of those who are directly impacted by any one event or responding to an event or whose livelihood may be upended by any one climate event. There's very real mental health challenges in those communities, in those populations, that are also critical to think about.

Host Amber Smith: This is Upstate's "The Informed Patient" podcast. I'm your host, Amber Smith.

I'm talking with Dr. Augusta Williams. She's a researcher in Upstate's department of public health and preventive medicine.

So what do you think is the most pressing public health or personal health challenge tied to climate change?

Augusta Williams, DSc: I think heat is one of the most pressing challenges we're actually facing today from a health standpoint.

If I were to ask any of our listeners here to close their eyes and think of a hot day, most of them will picture something that is sunny, blue sky, maybe involves some type of recreation that looks and is fun and playful, but heat is actually the most harmful of all of these different events we've talked about today. It results in more deaths per year than most of these other events combined.

And this is why heat is often deemed a silent killer by people working in that space. It doesn't look as scary as something like a tornado or a hurricane or a fire, but it is in fact more dangerous than those items, and it has so many different pathways through which it can harm our body and our health. And I don't think it gets the full recognition of those many different impacts.

And so getting the message out, communicating about the dangers of heat, whether that means it's worsening your heart health issues, or respiratory issues like asthma. It has impacts on maternal and child health, is a huge hazard to indoor and outdoor workers in many different parts of the world and has been associated with just excess health impacts across a wide variety of body systems. And communicating about that, making sure those most vulnerable populations are protected, is really key because it can truly impact everyone and is largely preventable.

So I think that's one of the most pressing public health issues, from my standpoint.

Host Amber Smith: Is increasing heat more of an issue around the Equator, or is the whole globe feeling increased heat?

Augusta Williams, DSc: The answer to this question, I think, is both. We are seeing the most severe heat in places around the Equator, and unfortunately there's projections coming out each year, showing that with more and more heat in those spaces, there may become regions that are uninhabitable in future years because it's too hot for human bodies to be able to effectively survive in those places.

But we also see extreme heat across the U.S., including here in New York state, in Syracuse. There's different things that make certain areas more or less vulnerable. Cities are prone to what's called the "urban heat island," where, because of their density and the materials they use and high-rise buildings, cities can be many degrees hotter than the surrounding suburban or rural areas.

They also might have less shading from trees. They may have communities where there not be the financial resources or cultural acceptance of air conditioning to cool off buildings, but then in rural areas you might not have dedicated cooling relief resources, leaving communities more vulnerable in that sense.

So, there might be different sectors of our world and population from locally to globally that are more susceptible to heat, and Equator locations have definitely seen the most severe of those temperatures, but there's regions all over where heat can impact individuals and their health.

Host Amber Smith: So it sounds like there's vulnerable people, potentially, everywhere.

Augusta Williams, DSc: Potentially everywhere. Potentially everywhere, but there's so much we know and have learned that there's actions and steps we can take to make these communities help individuals be more resilient to heat. Because again, any heat illness or injury is largely preventable, and I think there's so much we can be doing to make that happen in communities across the globe.

Host Amber Smith: Well, let's talk about what can be done about climate change. I know nationally there's talk about phasing out some of the fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy, but are there things that states and cities can do now to protect humans from the effects of climate change?

Augusta Williams, DSc: Definitely, and that's the great news about this topic, that even though climate change is real and here and impacts our health, we have so many solutions that we can take to tackle this. And there's been so much movement in states and cities across the country and the world making these changes, whether that's communities who may be dealing with the urban heat island or older housing infrastructure.

How can those buildings be retrofitted with cooler materials?

How can we add more trees to a community that lacks them? And the good news about trees is they have so many other health benefits as well.

In addition to reducing extreme heat, how can we make our homes and offices more energy efficient, so we're using less electricity and fewer fossil fuels?

How can we drive less? How can we advocate for community design that allows more walking, more biking, more carpooling, so, again, we're burning fewer fossil fuels?

How can states and cities. better protect workers who are outdoors or indoors without climate control exposed to these different climate events, especially heat, and also taking steps to ensure our health care system is truly sustainable, that it's resilient to best help and protect people when they're impacted by climate change, but is also sustainable in the sense that it's not contributing to climate change through the burning of fossil fuels?

And given we're in a big election year from local to national, voting is such a key thing that protects people's health, especially in relation to climate change.

Host Amber Smith: Well, I want to ask you about what individuals can do, and you mentioned carpooling, walking -- does walking or biking instead of driving really make much of a difference?

Augusta Williams, DSc: I am in the camp that climate action really needs to be multi-pronged and needs to come from all levels. There's large-scale policy and action we need at the national and international level, from states and cities as well, but there's also so many things we can all do in our everyday actions to help with this. And biking and walking is one of those, making sure areas are safe to do that in, reducing consumption.

Things like fast fashion and really quick shipping, that generates a lot of fossil fuels, whether through the transportation or the eventual waste of those items.

Things like turning off the lights when you leave a room can reduce energy usage and fossil fuel burning as well.

So all of these things are really important from all levels.

Host Amber Smith: I've heard people say that eating less meat and dairy is good also for the environment. How does that work?

Augusta Williams, DSc: So I think for climate action, one thing that individuals can think about is more mindful consumption of foods that in some way produce a lot of greenhouse gases.

So that could be meat or other animal products, which through their production generates greenhouse gases. But you may also think of foods that require a lot of land or water and can only be grown in areas where land and water are not as readily available. Things like palm oils or sugar canes require a lot of deforestation and water intensity that further contributes to climate change as well.

Or even foods that may be grown very far away and require a long transportation. So all of these things, as long as we can be more mindful about them as a collective in our day-to-day actions, I think they can make a lot of difference.

Host Amber Smith: So what do you say to people who don't think this is worth bothering with?

Augusta Williams, DSc: Well, the good news is that most people do think that climate change is happening. Last year's survey out of the Yale Climate Connections Group found that more than three quarters of Americans agree that climate change is happening. Almost the same percentage are worried about it, the same percentage, or above, support various climate actions.

People know that this is going to impact people that they love and care about, either today or in future generations, but only a third of people report that they regularly talk about this issue, and talking about climate change, especially framing it around health impacts, can be a really critical driver to encourage people to take action, in any small or large way.

It can help promote new social norms. It can help people feel more connected and involved. And if that doesn't work, by kind of making the case for more people are on board with this than people might originally think.

All of these different solutions also help to strengthen our economy. They make our communities more resilient. They better protect our health, of ourselves, our friends, our families, our patients. And they also create a more just, sustainable and equitable world. And to me, why wouldn't we want to do all of those things? So I think it's a really critical but exciting time, where we're seeing a lot of action, and we can make a lot of headway.

And being at a medical school, students who are future public health and health care professionals are very much engaged in this and making sure that their communities are resilient to climate change and fighting for better public health protection and promotion of their communities.

And it's just a really fantastic thing to see.

Amber Smith: Well, Dr. Williams, thank you so much for making time for this interview.

Augusta Williams, DSc: Thank you so much for having me.

Host Amber Smith: My guest has been Dr. Augusta Williams from Upstate's department of public health and preventive medicine.

"The Informed Patient" is a podcast covering health, science and medicine, brought to you by Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York, and produced by Jim Howe.

Find our archive of previous episodes at upstate.edu/informed.

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