Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

EPA scientist: Climate change already impacting Americans’ health

Allison Crimmins, an environmental scientist with the EPA and the lead author and coordinator of a congressionally-mandated national assessment on climate change and human health, told the Idaho climate change summit today that a key finding from the latest assessment was, “Climate change is a significant threat to the health of the American people.” She noted that that’s in the present tense, not the future. “Climate change is affecting our health right now, here in the United States,” she said.

It’s affecting how much pollen is produced and how allergenic that pollen is, for example, and also changing the length of the pollen season. In the middle of the country, she noted, “As you move north, the ragweed pollen season is extending – in some places it’s as much as a month longer than it was just in the ‘90s.”

Warmer temperatures also are creating more conducive conditions for the formation of ozone, the primary ingredient in urban smog, she said. And it’s affected the life cycle and distribution of mosquitoes that carry diseases including West Nile Virus and dengue fever.

Water-related illnesses also are happening at different times of the year than in the past, she said, and in different areas; an example is harmful algae blooms in the Puget Sound.

“This is not a faraway threat that’s happening to someone else far off in the future,” Crimmins said. “This is impacts that are happening to us, to the people in this room, right now.”

Steve Pew, environmental health director at Southeastern Idaho Public Health District, said it’s hard to quantify impacts in Idaho in part because Idaho is one of two states that does not require hospital discharge data to be submitted to the state. “So it’s very difficult to see what’s going on,” he said. Yet some impacts are clear, he said, such as wildfire smoke causing respiratory impacts in local patients. But as far as health surveillance and environmental health monitoring across the state, he said, “It just doesn’t exist.”

Pew said a colleague of his mentioned climate change at a meeting and “he was about to get drug out and strung up.” So Pew said he “started using the term extreme weather. … It’s easy for people to get a handle on that.”

Pew said his district is going to be getting a CDC public health associate to be assigned there for two years to study wildfires and their effect on asthma, and how to mitigate health issues from wildfires. “We’re trying to plan for these events and be prepared for when they happen,” he said.

As far as climate change, he said, “There is no money for us to do any activities. I have in my budget a very small line item called disaster preparedness.”



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

Follow Betsy online: