Editor’s note: This commentary is by Robert Areson, MD, a family medicine physician, and Lynn Zanardi Blevins, MD, MPH, a medical epidemiologist. They are Williston residents and members of the Vermont Climate and Health Alliance.
[T]his fall, voters should prioritize something important to us all – our health. Specifically, find out how your candidates will address climate change. As physicians, we are concerned about the climate-related illnesses we are observing in Vermont in clinics and hospitals and through public health data.
Climate change can directly cause illness and injury through its impact on weather. This summer’s record-breaking heat caused dehydration, heat stroke, acute kidney injury, and other heat-related conditions among Vermonters. More frequent and intense storms have caused a plethora of injuries and physical and mental health challenges.
Underlying disease can be exacerbated by climate change. For example, higher temperatures and increased carbon dioxide can cause plants such as ragweed to produce more pollen, worsening allergies and asthma. Extreme heat and poor air quality can exacerbate underlying cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
Climate change allows diseases to emerge where they were not previously clinically relevant or even existent. Lyme disease is a well-known example to Vermonters. On its heels is anaplasmosis, a bloodborne disease spread by the same black-legged tick that carries Lyme. Anaplasmosis, a potentially fatal disease that disproportionately affects those over 40 years of age, has dramatically increased in Vermont over the past decade.
Climate change affects animal health too. Moose are suffering from infestations of ticks due to warmer falls and earlier springs. Like humans, dogs are susceptible to Lyme and anaplasmosis. Dogs and wildlife are threatened by the harmful algal blooms (cyanobacteria) that thrive in warmer waters.
Reducing the health impacts of climate change requires both adaptation and mitigation. Adaptation means taking steps to prepare for anticipated changes like increasing flood preparedness and establishing systems that make us a more resilient community when natural disasters do strike. Mitigation is taking steps to reduce carbon emissions to minimize atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and the associated planetary warming. While some amount of climate change is inevitable, actions we take now will determine the extent to which our planet warms and how much our health is impacted. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel and Climate Change recently confirmed that climate change is well underway and that the time to act is short.
The need to address climate change is urgent. Your representatives should have clear plans to do so. Individual action is important, but solid policy at all levels of government is absolutely necessary to limit warming. This election season, consider your candidates’ positions on climate change policy. Our health depends on it.
For more, visit vtcha.org/vote.
