Climate change is real. It's happening in New Jersey. We will see more warm
extremes, fewer cold extremes. We will see heavy rains become more intense. We will
see more frequent dry spells, and we're also going to see sea level rise
continuing, which will increase the frequency and the intensity of coastal
flooding. The increase in temperature due to climate change will mean we have a
greater number of very hot days. Those hot days will lead to older people
having stress on their heart, stress on their lungs. Heavy rains will have an
obvious impact in flooding but a less obvious impact in that they'll increase
the amount of allergens in our region. Increased allergens, increased
temperatures will lead those with asthma to have more asthma attacks, and for
those who don't have asthma they could develop asthma in unusual parts of their
life. We'll see increased heat related deaths.
We'll see increased heat related illness such as heat stroke. We expect to see
more cardiovascular diseases, more respiratory diseases, more deaths from
things like drowning and increased carbon monoxide poisoning from the improper use
of generators, more water borne and food borne gastrointestinal illnesses,
increased asthma as well as changes in the patterns of vector-borne diseases
like West Nile virus and Lyme disease.
One thing that happens is that increased temperatures will lead to a higher level
of what's called ground-level ozone. Many of us have heard of bad days to go outside.
if you've got lung problems. Those lung problems are often caused by either
ozone, particular component of oxygen, or increased particulate matter from smog.
So increased temperature increases the ground-level ozone and increases the
impact of all the pollution that we know is out there on vulnerable people
specifically but really everyone's ability to breathe. In regards to heat
affecting public health, we're concerned about the most vulnerable people in our
population—the young, the elderly, the infirm. They are disproportionately affected by
heat and temperature, the potential for heatstroke,
you know, aggravation of conditions such as chronic pulmonary diseases, asthma,
dehydration. Pollen and allergens are going to be a particular problem with
climate change. The expectation is that while we will have more ninety degree days
in the summer, we will especially notice a later beginning of winter and early
ending of winter. What that also means is that the plants will start growing
earlier in the spring. They will have more opportunity to increase the amount
of pollen in the air and that will go on longer to the end of the year. Well, as
the hard frost gets later and later the allergens will stick around and continue
to bother people with reactive airway disease. One of the connections between
climate change and infectious disease has to do with contaminated water from
heavy rain events. Then you have runoff, you get combined sewage overflow, you can get
contaminated drinking water wells, so that can produce gastrointestinal
illness. During periods of heavy precipitation, we
find an increased load of bacteria on our beaches so basically it becomes a
risk to our bathing beach community and our tourists in that they might be
exposed to a higher level of bacteria because of the flushing out of the storm
drains and the storm sewers and so forth. Food can become contaminated. If there's
not enough refrigeration or things are left out. New Jersey's infrastructure is
such that heavy rains and heavy storms takes down power lines, disrupts
transportation, makes it difficult for people to move between their homes and
hospitals, has a particular impact on the elderly, the homebound elderly, or people
that need medical equipment like breathing machines. Those people might be
in situations where we can't get food to them, they might have difficulty in
gaining access to pharmaceuticals, but also they might have difficulty getting
to their jobs. A vector is usually described as an organism, usually a small
organism, that moves a pathogen that can cause disease between two hosts. So, for
example, a mosquito would be a vector of a disease like Zika between people.
Climate change is likely to increase our exposure to vector borne illnesses that
if there's an earlier spring and a later fall there's a longer period of time for
the different vectors that can affect human health to be out there. Also, if you
get increased number of rain events and then stretches of dryness, this is a
perfect setup for the rain creating a puddle for mosquitoes to breed in that
puddle but the mosquitoes not to be washed away. In New Jersey we have large
populations of salt marsh mosquitoes, and salt marsh mosquitoes depend on sea
level. The females lay eggs above the normal sea level of the tide, of the
tidal areas. If the tide is going to higher areas, they may end up laying eggs
in areas that were not usually exploited. And so we're seeing
hatches, large hatches, of salt marsh mosquitos in areas that the local mosquito
control programs are not expecting see, they're not prepared to treat. The
expansion of the Asian tiger mosquito across New Jersey and into New England
is associated with changes in average temperature which are associated with
global climate change. They were first detected in New Jersey
in 1995, and they've been building. So they started in more southern
counties. When I came to Rutgers in 2007, the western, northern counties in
New Jersey—Hunterdon, Warren, and also in Sussex, Morris—none of them had the
Asian tiger mosquito. All of them now have established populations. These
mosquitoes such as the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, and the yellow
fever mosquito, which is the Aedes aegypti, which is mostly associated with Zika and
chikungunya and dengue. These are mosquitoes that usually bite people
on a regular basis. And that means they're very dangerous as
vectors. We also have the West Nile virus vector, which is also likely to bite
people,though not as likely as the Asian tiger mosquito, but that mosquito does
not become infected with Zika even if it were to bite somebody infected with that
virus. So that's why we're focusing on the Asian tiger mosquito as the primary
danger in terms of vectoring these kinds of flavivirus like zika, chikungunya,
yellow fever, dengue.
We also expect to see increased mental and behavioral impacts from stress
related to extreme events and concerns over climate change. So if you imagine a
group of people who are growing up in the United States and around the world
who constantly wonder what kind of world are going to be living in a generation
from now, you can imagine the day-to-day psychological burden on that population.
It's going to be very difficult to prove that impact, but it's not clear me we
have to prove it to act to help our younger people live in this modern world.
In regards to mental health, we found that during Hurricane Sandy a number of
residents in New Jersey were adversely affected by climate change. We've seen
some of the data that shows that there have been increases in mental health
illness, increases in depression, increases in drug use and abuse, so we
feel that more detail and more effort needs to be taken to look at the
mental health component. There are certain factors that make populations
predisposed to adverse impacts from a changing climate. So, for instance, your
exposure, where you live, if you live in an area that's flood prone that
predisposes you to an adverse impact. What your job is, what your occupation is
will have an effect. If you're in construction, landscaping, those sorts of
exposures increase your risk during times of high heat.
Everyone will be affected by the atmospheric effects of climate and
climate change but the people who already have damaged lungs, people with
asthma, very young people, and then people my age and older, but if they've been a
smoker, if they have have chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease, if they have emphysema, those types of people will be really
susceptible to the impact of atmospheric change due to climate change. And finally
your ability to cope and your capacity to adapt certainly impacts your ability
to … your sensitivity and your vulnerability to climate change. And when
we look at the social determinants of health, you know, do you have a job, you
know does that job mean that you have health care, all the sort of items that
people don't normally think would have a a public health impact from the
standpoint of climate change. Lower income communities have less resources
and less infrastructure which would enable them to prepare to become more
resilient and that puts you at greater risk. There are certain communities that
have already disproportionate burdens in respect to environmental contaminants.
Many of them are historically in urban areas, riverfront communities where there
may be industrial facilities still operating or there's a legacy of
industrial contamination. They're communities which tend to have highways
bifurcate them, and so there's exposure to emissions from cars and particulates. They
may be near ports, so they're getting additional exposure from atmospheric
particulates as well as ozone exposure. So, therefore, with climate change it just
exacerbates these issues.
We need the whole community to come together and say, well, what's our most
vulnerable population or subsets of the population, and how can we best
address those needs to make sure that we have healthier communities. We have to
take a holistic, a more systemic approach in the health community to go through
these exposures one by one and make sure we're really protecting the
greatest number of people and making good decisions going forward with
planning processes that need to start now for the future. Well, it's
become a cliche now but think globally and act locally is particularly
important in public health, and so we have a lot of day-to-day, somewhat dreary
or sometimes mundane work to do in really going door to door,
person to person, and connecting with our population and figuring out how can we
help you today, how can we help you when there's a storm, how can we help you
after the storm. So a number of things would be very useful to improve our
ability to address climate change in public health impacts, and those things
include expanding our reach into the public health community. We have
established a public health working group where we've brought together many
sectors from various local, state, county and the academic community in trying to
work together on understanding what the needs are in the public health community so that we can start to get a coherent game plan.
The other thing that's really important is leadership. Certainly when you have leaders that are
concerned about the issue then that brings attention to the issue. But with
leadership we would hope come resources—so resources to conduct our assessments,
resources to deliver tools to communities, resources for communities
who are most at risk and need more help. We're not suggesting to
create a whole new institutional structure to address climate change in
public health. What we want to do is use existing delivery systems, existing
planning mechanisms that are at the state level, at the county level, at the
local level so that they can start to put a climate lens through these
planning processes so that we can start to think about long-term what do we need
to do to prepare for public health in New Jersey.
Part of what public health is trying to say is climate change is something you
really need to worry about it's not just another one of the thousand things out
there. This is a big one, perhaps the big one for the future of health in the
United States and in New Jersey particularly.
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