Heat And Smoke Are Worse Together Than Apart
Heat and wildfire smoke combined do far more damage to human health than either threat alone—and these hazards disproportionately affect low-income and nonwhite communities, new research shows. A study published Friday in Science Advances looks at zip code data and cardiorespiratory hospitalizations across California between 2006–2019, comparing those data to days when the temperature spiked, when air quality was poor thanks to wildfires, or when both factors were present, finding that hospitalizations rose on days with both conditions. The study also found that several socioeconomic markers in neighborhoods—including lower income levels, lower health insurance coverage levels, lower tree canopy density, and a higher percentage of racial and ethnic minority residents—contributed to more hospitalizations. As climate change gets worse, the likelihood of sweltering days with poor air quality are likely to rise. “We should stop considering extreme heat and wildfire separately,” Tarik Benmarhnia, an environmental epidemiologist at UC San Diego and co-author of the study, told InsideClimate News. (New York Times $, AP, InsideClimate News)
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