Climate - Fighting Extreme Heat In 2026
Human Health & the Environment
Duration: 00:43:17
Released: 2026
Series: 1A
Extreme heat isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a growing public health threat.More than 40 million people across the U.S. have remained under heat alerts this month. Heat remains the deadliest extreme weather event in the United States. At least 44 people have died as a result of July heatwaves. And in Europe, heatwaves killed more than 10,000 people in June, according to health data published this month.Climate change is making heatwaves hotter and more frequent. And high temps aren’t just being reported in daytime. Nighttime temperatures are higher than ever. And scientists say that’s raising the risk of heat exhaustion and heatstroke – and taking away crucial time for you and the planet to recover.What do you need to know about the effects of heat on your health? And how you can stay safe?Find more of our programs online. Listen to 1A sponsor-free by signing up for 1A+ at plus.npr.org/the1a.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
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Speaker: 000:00:07
This is one a. I’m Naila Budu in for Jen White. Extreme heat isn’t just an inconvenience. It’s a growing public health threat. More than forty million people across The US have remained under heat alerts this month. Heat remains the deadliest extreme weather event in The United States. And in Europe, heat waves killed more than ten thousand people in June. That’s according to just published health data published from 27 countries. Climate change is making heat waves hotter and more frequent, and high temps aren’t just being reported in the daytime. Nighttime temperatures are higher than ever. And scientists say that’s raising the risk of heat exhaustion and heat stroke and taking away crucial time for you and the planet to recover. Today, what do you need to know about the effects of heat on your health and how you can stay safe, and what are cities and states doing to fight the heat? We’ll get into all of that, but first, let’s start in one county that is focusing on fighting extreme heat from the top. Joining us now is mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Democratic mayor of Miami Dade County, home to almost 3,000,000 people. Mayor Levine Cava, welcome to one a.
Speaker: 100:01:16
Thank you so much, Nyla.
Speaker: 000:01:17
Let’s start with a chief heat officer role that you created a few years ago. How did that position come to be? Why did you see a need for this? It’s the first one ever created.
Speaker: 100:01:29
I have to give credit to Adrienne Arish, who is a philanthropist and very involved in climate change issues, and she actually brought it to our attention. And we said, absolutely, we need to do that because after all, we are the heat capital in so many ways. So we did appoint the first in the world and we have been a national leader and an international leader since then. I co chair the Climate Mayor’s Extreme Heat Cohort. We’ve created an Extreme Heat Action Plan that has made incredible progress and is modeled across the the city and and the the country and the world. And, we are are moving forward and making great progress in reducing heat related related effects.
Speaker: 000:02:15
So I know that position was launched in 2021. Although it doesn’t exist anymore, it was eliminated as part of budget cuts last year. How is that work being done now?
Speaker: 100:02:26
Yeah. So in actual fact, our chief resilience officer is also our chief chief heat officer. So we haven’t eliminated it, but the founder, Jane Gilbert, did retire. She, again, global leader. And we also, have a dedicated staff person who is our coordinator and who is maintaining our focus,
Speaker: 000:02:49
on this work. What does it mean from a government spending level in Miami Dade County to focus on heat resistance? What does that look like?
Speaker: 100:02:58
Yeah. So we are doing so many things. We created a heat season. We, have cooling centers 60 around the county, so we leave buildings open, during the heat season. We, give our staff access to not just water and breaks and shade, but those who are exposed, we give them electrolytes, so that they can maintain their body healthy while working outdoors. So all of those things do cost money. We, also, have the staffing, as has been described, and we reduce our energy through all kinds of resilience measures. We’ve done so much to make our buildings more efficient, and that is is good for the environment, and it’s good for the budget as well.
Speaker: 000:03:49
We’re talking to mayor Danielle Lavigne Cava, Democratic mayor of Miami Dade County, Florida. Mayor, I wanted to play this voice mail we got from Alex.
Speaker: 200:03:57
I believe trees are some of the best ways we can adapt cities to climate change and mitigate the negative effects of heat. My concern is as we try to make more room for trees, we’re still competing with cars that seem to dominate our cities and have ample parking. I would like to see cities reduce parking and narrow streets to allow more connected green space while reducing the pervious pavement that hold heat well into the night.
Speaker: 000:04:20
Mayor Lubinkaba, I wonder how you would respond to Alex’s message there. I would say as a native Miami, and I know how much people love cars across the city. Like, how are you thinking about city infrastructure when it comes to fighting heat in Miami Dade?
Speaker: 100:04:34
Well, first, let’s talk about trees because trees absolutely are essential. They can reduce ambient temperature by as much as 10 degrees. So we have been very aggressively planting trees. Last year alone, we gave away 25,000 trees, so we had regular tree giveaways and particularly in the neighborhoods with lower tree canopy. So, that is a critical part of it. We also, of course, are pushing transit. Transit is much more efficient. It has lower emissions, so it’s overall helping climate as well as traffic.
Speaker: 000:05:11
So those are a few of the the ways that we’re addressing it. I mentioned nearly 3,000,000 people live across the county. We’ve all probably heard of the idea of extreme heat islands. Can you explain how in Miami, some neighborhoods are more unequal than others when it comes to how people are experiencing extreme heat?
Speaker: 100:05:29
Yeah. As I said, you’ve got lower income communities, sadly, are often those with the lower tree canopy. So we’ve been targeting our tree giveaway and our tree maintenance in those neighborhoods and actually providing support for how to take care of those trees. Also, removal of large trees is very much discouraged, and we’ve also started relocating large trees. If infrastructure projects require their removal, we are working hard and have been working with some fantastic vendors to move them so that we do not lose, the overall benefit of that. We also have done a lot to bring more cooling to those neighborhoods. So the cooling centers, I mentioned 60, that are across the county. We also, for example, in our public housing installed 1,700 high efficiency cooling units, through dollars from the infrastructure bill in the previous administration. So we also have shaded now, bus stops. That’s critically important. We want people to use transit, but they’re exposed to the elements, including heat, so we have launched an aggressive campaign to provide shade for for those who have to, wait in in the elements for their buses.
Speaker: 000:06:51
Mary, you mentioned the previous administration. Are you getting the support from the federal government, as well as from Tallahassee and state government for, these different implementations that you would like to have across this the county?
Speaker: 100:07:06
Well, I will say, sadly, the state legislature preempted us from heat standards standards for workers other than our own county employees who we do protect. But fortunately, we’ve been able to raise awareness with our public education campaigns, and we have hundreds of companies that have come to us for training and education and utilizing our tools, how to protect their workers with shade, water, and rest.
Speaker: 000:07:34
We got this text message. I work outdoors at parks in Miami Dade County. Some parks have put out big barrels of cool water with cups for the attendees. Other hosts have made sure lots of coolers full of bottles of water were available. In the past few years, I’ve been at events, and patrons have passed out. EMS has to be called. I passed out once at home. I believe I was experiencing dehydration. I’ve now made a simple concoction of water, a tablespoon of lemon juice, and orange juice, and salt, and sip on that throughout the event. Mayor Lavinkava, when you think about, the culture, particularly around workers and what employers need to do, you mentioned that you have tried to set a standard with county workers. What else have you, what other conversations do you have with major employers, especially as people are working outside to protect them?
Speaker: 100:08:24
Yeah. So definitely, we’ve been very successful with a lot of our employers adopting voluntarily because we’re preempted from mandating the kinds of protections that, this this person has mentioned. But as well, we’re very aggressive with our hydration stations. So water is life is our theme for our water and sewer department. We go with, dispensers of of water from the tap. Right? We’re avoiding water bottles. We don’t need those. We want people to to bring their own containers and, of course, if they’re using bottles to recycle. But I’ll give you an example. World Cup, we just had seven games. And during that time, most of the games were on days of extreme heat. In fact, the first extreme heat day was on the first day of World Cup, June 15. We have been so successful in preventing serious illness from heat, we distributed about enough water in cups to about twenty percent of the game attendees across, the the games, the the whole season, and that, unfortunately, they were not allowed to bring more than a small water bottle, and, of course, it costs money at those stadiums to to purchase. So we were very pleased. We had cooling stations, and people availed themselves of that, and we were able to greatly reduce any injury both at the games and at our fan fest. You know, when you think about South Florida, I think,
Speaker: 000:09:50
hurricanes are sort of the natural disaster that gets encoded into people’s DNA. Tropical storm Bertha is making its way across The Gulf as we speak. How do you think about heat waves as part of your overall natural disaster strategy, and how are you trying to help people recognize this can be a serious problem?
Speaker: 100:10:08
Yeah. We added heat to our trifecta, hurricanes, floods, and heat. So what used to be our annual hurricane season is now all three. And we use that for public education, awareness, prevention, just as you say. We also worked with the National Weather Service to signal extreme heat at a lower temperature given the extreme humid conditions in our environment. So all of this is designed around increasing awareness. Look, when we started this with the first heat officer, people laughed. They thought it was a joke, but they’re not laughing anymore.
Speaker: 000:10:47
That was Daniella Levine Cava, Democratic mayor of Miami Dade County, Florida. Mayor Levine Cava, thank you for being with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. We got this from another listener in Florida. I plant native trees and bushes here in South Florida, and my property stays about 15 degrees cooler most days. I find it pleasant to garden any time of day. If people did not remove trees and did not let developers remove trees, then the land will take care of itself. You can keep the comments coming by emailing 1a@wamu.org. Coming up, the effects of heat on your health, what do you need to know, and how can you stay safe? I’m Nyla Budu. This is one a from WAMU and NPR. I’m Naila Budu. This is one a. We’re talking about extreme heat. Let’s turn to the effects of extreme heat on our bodies and what you can do to stay safe. Joining us now is Amrita Nourisarma. She’s an environmental epidemiologist studying climate change and health, an and assistant professor at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Amrita, welcome. Thank you for having me. And Jiva Lang is also with us. She’s a staff writer at Heatmap News. Jiva, it’s nice to have you as well. Hi. Excited to be here. And we wanna hear from you listening. How are you responding to the heat and staying cool this summer? We just heard from Miami Dade County. What are your city officials doing? Share your tips and experiences. You can email us 1a@wamu.org. Jeva, I was just mentioning we just spoke with the mayor of Miami Dade County. I just wondered your thoughts about what she said about cities, climate resilience, the idea of having someone actually at the county level focusing on this.
Speaker: 400:12:58
Yeah. I think this is really important work, and Miami is such a leader in this area. And, I think there’s other cities too that are doing great work in this area as well. The two that come to mind are, Spokane and Portland, have been pursuing, temperature maximums for renters. Renters tend to have the lowest AC, access of, compared to homeowners, and that’s been a really exciting, method of pursuit for those cities to protect people from the extreme heat. But I think the the big takeaway here is just that we need to be taking heat more seriously, whether that’s protections for people at home or protections, like you were discussing, the heat can or the urban heat effect
Speaker: 000:13:50
and the tree canopy is, protecting people in that way. And, Risha, do we know yet, as we see cities taking more action, if there’s a way to determine if that is leading to fewer heat related emergency room visits?
Speaker: 300:14:04
Yeah. This is a great question. And I think that it’s a little bit challenging because there’s obviously some lag between when the heat wave happens and when we get back information. So we might have to wait for a couple of weeks to know whether or not the strategies were effective, but we are starting to get information quicker and quicker, regarding emergency department visits and hospitalizations associated with heat. We’re also starting to see signals in some of the more nontraditional health outcomes that are associated with extreme heat. So, you might think of heat stress or heat stroke as some of the more obvious directly related pathways, but we’re starting to see things like dehydration illnesses, renal insufficiency. We’re seeing some patterns in terms of changes in the ways that people respond for those health outcomes as well. So I think looking beyond just the traditional health outcomes is a good way that we can start to see those signals sooner as well.
Speaker: 000:14:59
Jeva, it’s been a few weeks since the July 4 weekend, which we saw record breaking heat waves throughout the country. More than 20 cities broke heat records this month. We know temperatures are rising year after year as a result of climate change. What factors are behind this summer’s extreme heat that we need to know about?
Speaker: 400:15:19
Yeah. Great question. June 2026 was the second warmest globally, and it was the hottest ever for Western Europe. I think when you look at the headline number for The United States, it’s the eighteenth warmest June in the Contiguous United States. It just doesn’t sound very extreme. But what we’re seeing is these prolonged severe heat domes. So those highs are really, really high. Like you were saying, there were, I think, 1,300 heat records matched or broken over that fourth of July weekend. And that’s just, again, because the because of greenhouse gas emissions and also, likely a strong El Nino. We’re still figuring out exactly what mechanism is at play for the heat here, but
Speaker: 000:15:58
the greenhouse gas emissions make the entire atmosphere warmer. That means we’re starting at a warmer baseline. So these highs can get really, really high as a as a result of that. Jeva, we should I wonder if you can just help us understand. We’ve used the term extreme heat a few times now. Can you define that for us precisely in how it’s categorized?
Speaker: 400:16:16
Yeah. It’s a it’s a hard question to answer because extreme heat, is so contextual. Extreme heat for people in the South is very different than extreme heat for people in, say, the Pacific Northwest or people in Northern Europe, these places that haven’t seen extreme temperatures before. So there isn’t really, like, a number or a threshold that you have to break in order to be have extreme heat or not. It’s really about, how
Speaker: 000:16:40
how much does this diverge from the historic norms in this area. So, Amrita, you talked about heat related emergency room visits. Around 120,000 were recorded across The US in 2023. That’s according to the CDC. At what temperature and under what temperature conditions with the heat index, does the heat become particularly dangerous for our bodies? And I imagine, of course, there are caveats to people who are much more vulnerable than others.
Speaker: 300:17:10
Yeah. That’s a really good question. And I think, going back to one of the things that Jeeva was saying a few minutes ago, it’s so contextual because extreme heat, it means something different if you’re in the Northern Part of US compared with the Southern Part of US. Some of that is also about adaptation that’s already been implemented in different communities. So, you know, homes in the Southern United States might have air conditioning, for example. So the ambient temperatures might have a less of an impact until the temperature gets much more extreme. But generally speaking, once we see a combination of heat and humidity, that’s above about the ninety fifth percentile of whatever is normal for that area. That’s when we start to see these really sharp increases. And we think of that as a more extreme heat period. And we start to look at comparing increases in some of those severe cases of heat related illness around that threshold. What does the ninety fifth percentile mean? Again, it means something different if you’re in the Southern US compared with New York or Boston, for example.
Speaker: 000:18:15
What are some signs people should look out for that might signal heat exhaustion or heat stroke, and what’s the difference between those two, Amrita?
Speaker: 300:18:24
Yeah. So heat exhaustion is, maybe I could call it a little bit of a less extreme version of heat related illness. It’s where people start to feel tired. Your body is no longer able to sweat, which is one of the primary ways that we kind of cool off when it’s very hot outside. By comparison, heat stroke looks very similar to a regular stroke. It’s dizziness. It’s, kind of loss of speech patterns. It’s, you know, changes in your ability to speak. It’s changes in your ability in your cognitive function. And it is generally something that requires more severe treatment. So, if you have heat exhaustion, you can generally treat that at home with hydration. One of the things that the mayor was mentioning earlier is that water is life. That’s very important. If you’re having a heat stroke, that should be you know, you should be looking out for some of those more severe symptoms, and that should be a good reason to visit an emergency room or an urgent care facility to get your core body temperature cooled down.
Speaker: 000:19:32
Jeva, there are as many as twelve thousand recorded heat deaths in The US each year. How does that how do we account for that? How do we know that people have died because of extreme heat?
Speaker: 400:19:42
It’s a complicated question. There’s about three different ways you can calculate excess or, heat deaths. One is direct and indirect. These are two different categories of looking at deaths. So direct deaths from heat, there’s a diagnostic code. It’s x 30. It’s a medical classification for a death due to excessive natural heat. This is distinct from excessive unnatural heat, such as a tanning bed death, a little bit of morbid trivia through the morning. But the direct deaths are exactly what we’re talking about in terms of heat exhaustion or heat stroke. The the classic what you think of as somebody dying from heat. Then there are excess dust or indirect dust from heat. That’s cardiovascular events, stroke, complications from diabetes, respiratory illness, all the other ways that heat can kill you that’s maybe a little bit more invisible. So if somebody comes into a hospital with a heart attack, the physicians are treating that heart attack. They’re not sitting there being like, is this heart attack from the heat outside right now? So it might not be coded as a direct heat death, but it’s still somebody who died from the heat. And there’s two different ways you can count these excess heat deaths. So one is to look at how many more people died compared to what you would have expected for that period of time. And then for so for an example of this is, in France, there were, twenty one thousand six hundred all cause deaths between June 17 and July 2. That was their heat wave in Europe. Statistical modeling would have expected about fifteen thousand nine hundred and ten deaths based on the previous year, so that gives us an excess of about seven or, five thousand seven hundred. And then the third way of doing this is basically a predictive model. So saying we know when the temperature rises by x amount, this number of people will die and kind of using that model to fit with, the temperatures that were recorded. So there’s a bunch of different ways to record excess deaths, a bunch of different models that need to be peer reviewed. And so this this work is still ongoing for heat events, both in Europe and in North America. But this is why you can see many different numbers for how many people died in a given heat wave.
Speaker: 000:21:50
That’s Jiva Lang, a staff writer at Heatmap News. We’re also talking to Amrita Nourasarmi Nuri Sarma. She’s a environmental epidemiologist studying climate change and health. We’re getting texts and emails from you all. We got this text from one of you. I am medically unable to deal well with heat. Anytime the temps start hitting the upper eighties, I am strictly inside or headed for another air conditioned space. Of course, that means I miss out on all the nice outdoor activities, including the beach. Amrita, can I ask you we also got this text? Is there any data on how COVID is impacting people’s heat tolerances or exacerbating heat effects? I’ve been getting more frequent migraines from the heat. Friends of mine with high blood pressure are reporting suffering. It seems like I’m less able to tolerate it now than I was a couple of years ago.
Speaker: 300:22:40
Yeah. That’s a great question. And I think that there are potentially two things that are happening here. The first one is that, obviously, COVID changed a lot of people’s, ability to be in public spaces. And I think for a long time, people were kind of isolating and staying indoors, avoiding close contact with other people. And as a result, I think there have been some long term impacts on, immune systems across the board. And so I think people have definitely suffered from that long lack of exposure to the outdoors and to other people. And I think that has some, immunological implications for the long term. I think the other thing is that people who have experienced COVID illness, and at this point, we’ve gone through multiple waves of COVID, that might also have an individual level impact, as this person mentioned in their note. So people who have experienced maybe some of the symptoms of long COVID, we do talk about often how one of the most vulnerable groups, to extreme heat is people with preexisting medical conditions. So we do know that people who have underlying, for example, cardiovascular diseases or illnesses, people who have respiratory illnesses, people who have pre existing mental health conditions may be particularly susceptible when it’s very hot outside. And I would say the same is likely true for people who are experiencing the symptoms of long COVID. There might be some individual level vulnerability because of the long term medical impacts that you’re facing after having a period of COVID infection as well.
Speaker: 000:24:16
I wanted to, Jeeva, talk to you about wildfire smoke. This year, along with the heat, we’ve seen wildfire smoke from Canada blanketing the Midwest and East Coast affecting a hundred and fifteen million Americans. What’s the relationship between extreme heat and wildfires? What’s made this year’s wildfire smoke especially bad?
Speaker: 400:24:35
Yeah. So there’s, it’s there there’s a lot of relationships between wildfire smoke and heat. In particular, this year, the the smoke was directed over the most populated areas of The United States by the heat dome, which was raising all of those temperatures. So the temperatures got really hot in, Northern Minnesota and Ontario. There were lightning fires, and, that smoke then rotated around this heat dome that was making extreme temperatures, and blew the smoke into some of the most populated areas of the country. And this is, when we talk about, like, compounding climate crises, this is kind of the classic example of you wanna run your air conditioning, you wanna have your windows open because it’s so hot out, but at the same time, you need to protect yourself from the wildfire smoke. So these two crises really go hand in hand and make a kind of a perfect storm of, like, terrible conditions that you want to avoid.
Speaker: 000:25:34
Yeah. Emerta, a study published in February by the journal Scientific Advance shows that wildfire smoke inhalation caused twenty four thousand deaths each year from 2006 to 2020. What effect does wildfire smoke have on our bodies?
Speaker: 300:25:53
Well, we know that there are a lot of impacts from just overall air pollution exposure. There’s a pretty direct relationship between how much particulate matter you’re inhaling, especially the finer particulate matter that’s smaller in size, which can descend deeper into the lungs and cross the blood brain barrier and lead to a whole host of different health outcomes. And we know that that happens even at very low levels. So once we get into particulate matter that’s much of much higher in concentration, such as the, PM that we see from wildfires, we can see a lot of different health impacts from that. We see respiratory illnesses. We see cardiovascular illnesses. We see increases in stroke. There are a lot of different health impacts from, exposure to that high level of particulate matter. The other thing that I think is really important is, you know, in addition to people not being used to those very high levels, you know, in The United States, because PM 2.5 has historically since the Clean Air Act, been pretty heavily regulated, we’ve seen, pretty low concentrations on a regular basis of particulate matter. But when we have a wildfire where trees are burning or maybe urban areas are burning, we’ll see these huge spikes in the levels of PM 2.5, and people just aren’t used to it. People are experiencing these extreme levels, that that they haven’t been experiencing historically at baseline.
Speaker: 000:27:18
Jeva, in a headline this month, heat map calls wildfire smoke the East Coast’s new forever problem. Are there federal guidelines that exist around wildfire smoke the way we’ve been talking about cities trying to deal with extreme heat? From a policy standpoint, are we doing enough to deal with this persistent problem?
Speaker: 400:27:38
I don’t think so. This is such a new problem in parts of the country that there aren’t really standards for dealing with it. I think a really good example of this actually is that heat and air quality alerts are not typically considered together. These are two separate metrics and two separate alert systems. And, really, they should not be triggered independently. They should be considered together. Again, as you were talking about, they go hand in hand. And I think we’re just seeing the way that cities are kind of on their back foot with dealing with wildfire smoke when it comes to everything from deciding at what point we should cancel sporting events or outdoor events. There’s not really an AQI threshold that people talk about yet. And I think, yeah, it’s just an area that there’s a lot of opportunity to make decisions now before it gets worse.
Speaker: 000:28:30
That’s Jiva Lang, a staff writer with Heatmap News. We’re discussing street extreme heat as well with Amruta Nuri Sarma. She’s an assistant professor of environmental health and population sciences at Harvard. Still to come, what are the long term effects of heat exposure on your health, and what responsibility do local and national governments have to protect you? And you can join the conversation. We got this text. I live in Dallas, and the temperature yesterday went up to 111 degrees. I make sure I have lots of water, leave my car windows open when I park, and I park my car in the shade. I’m trying to stay in shaded areas as much as possible. We’re gonna be talking about shade coming up. You can keep the questions or comments coming to 1a@wamu.org. I’m Nyla Voodoo. This is one a. Let’s get back to our conversation on extreme heat with Amruta Nuri Sarma. She’s an assistant professor of environmental health and population sciences at Harvard, and Jeeva Lang, a staff writer at Heatmap News. Jiva, I wanted to go back to Europe for a moment. We’ve talked about the fifty seven hundred heat related deaths in June that France recorded, thirty six percent more than the average year. That’s the most since February heat wave. Jiva, I hear from my family in Europe a lot about how different it is compared to America experiencing heat waves. You were in Europe in June. What was it like?
Speaker: 400:30:30
Yeah. I was in Europe in June, and I was there specifically with my nine month old baby and my father who both fall into these vulnerable populations, a very young person and older person. And it was really scary. I mean, we were privileged enough to be on vacation. We were staying hotels that had great AC, but I really feel for people who didn’t have that ability to get out of the heat very easily. One of our kind of scary experiences was actually in Paris the first day of the heat wave where we were out with our baby in a backpack, and she got way too hot. She was slumped over. We actually were trying to find a place that had AC to get her to cool down. And it was very difficult to find AC. It’s just not as widely available as it is in The United States. So I think both culturally, there’s not the same, emphasis on putting an AC unit in your building as there is in The United States. And then also just these aren’t places that have historically had to deal with extreme heat. And as a result, the buildings, the airflows, all of the infrastructure there is just not set up for,
Speaker: 000:31:34
these triple digit temperatures that they’re seeing now. We got this text from James. I spend most of my day in my living room because it’s the only air conditioned room in my 100 year old home. Having just returned from The UK, I appreciate the amount of air conditioning we have in The US. I’ve also been taking cold showers to cool off. As for others in my area, I know in the past that the city has used the old train Depot as a cooling center as we do have a significant number of unhoused people. Jiva, when we talk about air conditioning, that’s 90% of American households who have it. In Europe, that’s about 20% to what you’re discussing. I wanted to ask you, there’s a pilot program in New York City that’s giving renters power banks to try to alleviate the strain on the power grid for their, air conditionings from everyone turning on their AC at once. It’s just a small program right now, but giving away renter friendly generators. The company that’s giving away these renter friendly generators hopes to roll it out in other cities. How important is air conditioning to this conversation, especially as we factor in the electrical grid as well as the fossil fuel consumption that happens as we’re using AC?
Speaker: 400:32:47
Yeah. AC is life giving at this moment in The United States. We really rely on it. And I think that there is a danger in over relying on air conditioning. There are scenarios that have been run specifically looking at what would happen in Phoenix if there was a heat wave, and the numbers up there are pretty scary. I think it’s like a third of the city could end up hospitalized if there was a multi day heat wave where there was a blackout at the same time. And so while AC is important and critical and especially access to AC, again, this is also an affordability issue, of course, or people who can’t afford to run their AC all summer. We need to be finding other ways to keep our cities cool as well.
Speaker: 000:33:31
We got this text from Diane. Houston is hot, muggy, and feels like temperatures of a 105 and up. It’s best to stay inside and only go outside if necessary. Even dog walking has to be curtailed and shifted off sidewalks and roads to shaded area. My biggest fear is that the electrical grid can’t handle the load and power outages result. Dheeva, how have we seen the grid handling things this summer? Pretty well, it seems.
Speaker: 400:33:55
Yeah. So far, it’s been okay. And I think that’s a relief. We’ve also seen these record pulls on the grid, especially in the New York City area, I believe. And so it’s holding up okay. But, again, this is always a thing that operators are worried about in the summer is the potential for because the heat doesn’t just stress people’s bodies. It stresses the infrastructure too, the electrical grid’s infrastructure. So, at the same time, our bodies are getting exhausted. The infrastructure is getting exhausted.
Speaker: 000:34:27
Emerta, do we need to be considering AC as a public health matter, access to air conditioning?
Speaker: 300:34:34
Absolutely. And it’s one of the strategies that I think has been mentioned consistently throughout the last, you know, few minutes of the conversation, you know, opening up cooling centers as a public health intervention, air conditioned spaces for public access. And I think that, you know, we need to, as you said, balance the pros and cons of additional reliance on, air conditioning, especially as we start to see more and more number of days where we’re hitting these extreme temperatures and longer and longer periods where we need those types of interventions or some sort of alternative
Speaker: 000:35:08
for public health. Can I ask you about Diane’s text, Ruta, where she says that it’s best to stay inside and only go outside? Dog walking even has to be curtailed. What are we seeing with extreme heat? I know it’s really affected my exercise routine this summer. As someone who likes to exercise outdoors, how how are we seeing extreme heat affecting people’s health in that way?
Speaker: 300:35:31
Yeah. I think it makes it more challenging to do some of those outdoor activities that you might enjoy. I think that, you know, one of the things we could do is we could ask people to shift the timings when they’re going outside for their activities or for their exercise. So instead of, you know, going in the middle of the day, maybe focusing on early morning periods where the temperatures might be slightly cooler, of course, that only works when we don’t see the extended periods of extreme heat that lasts into the night. And there might be other options such as, you know, trying to work out in an air conditioned space or in a gym or something along those lines. But I do think it does have impacts for people who usually prefer to exercise outdoors.
Speaker: 000:36:10
Let’s talk about air conditioning, cooling centers. I wanted to play a little bit of New York City mayor Zoran Mondami before the fourth of July holiday earlier this month talking about mitigating the effects of heat exposure.
Speaker: 500:36:23
These are extremely dangerous conditions, and they will affect every part of our city. To prepare, I have activated the city’s heat emergency plan. Since last week, our city agencies have been proactively coordinating to keep New Yorkers and tourists safe. We will also issue targeted alerts through our city’s advanced warning system to protect our most vulnerable neighbors, like older New Yorkers and those with chronic illnesses. Beginning tomorrow, the city will open hundreds of cooling centers across the five boroughs.
Speaker: 000:36:57
Amruta, aside from cooling centers and vans that the New York City mayor announced, what else is important to be, you can do to stay cool in record heat, especially if you’re not able to access those facilities?
Speaker: 300:37:12
Yeah. We’ve done a lot of work, especially in the Greater Boston area to try and understand what the, factors are that encourage people to use public spaces for cooling activities and also what some of the barriers might be. I think a couple of things that are really important is that people who would use those facilities want active cooling or active opportunities to become cooler in places that they’re already going. So I think one of the things that the mayor mentioned earlier was providing drinking water in those high important component, rather than having another place that people have to go to get protection from the heat. Other things are looking for other types of cooling. So public splash pads, public pools, places where people could use water based activities. We know that those are really protective during extreme heat waves as well. And then finally making drinking water widely available, shaded spaces widely available. Maybe those aren’t as effective as air conditioned spaces, but in an opportunity to have shade versus direct sunlight, I think the shade will often be preferable,
Speaker: 000:38:28
to reduce some of those health impacts as well. I do wanna talk about shade, but first, can I just ask you about the water breaks, especially for outdoor workers? We heard Miami Dade mayor Danielle LaVine Cava talk about the fact that they tried to pass legislation in Miami that was overturned, by the governor. The same and the similar things we’ve seen in Texas in 2023. Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott approved a law eliminating ten minute water breaks for construction workers arguing that it bogs down businesses. As we’re seeing some states move to take away these protections from different municipalities, what can people who work outdoors or have to be outdoors for prolonged periods of time do to stay safe?
Speaker: 300:39:13
It’s a good question. And I think, you know, carrying water on their person so that they can continue to take sips of water throughout the day, it’s really important to stay hydrated. That’s the only way that we’re going to see, you know, less of these extreme health outcomes. And one of the things that I would argue from a public health perspective is that, yes, it could be disruptive to have a ten minute water break, but it would also be disruptive to have a worker who experiences heat stress or heat exhaustion or heat stroke and has to have a more severe medical intervention as a result. So I think it’s important for businesses to take those different trade offs into consideration. Do I give my workers a ten minute water breaks in order to ensure that I’m not they’re not experiencing a larger health event down the line? So, you know, I think I think it’s really important to make sure that people can have access to hydration, access to breaks, access to shaded spaces if they’re working outdoors.
Speaker: 000:40:08
As we’re talking about shade, last summer during another heat wave in Europe, we spent an hour talking about the value of shade and staying cool and why most cities in The US don’t have enough of it. Here’s V. Kelly Turner, a professor of planning at UCLA.
Speaker: 300:40:23
Shade fundamentally changes the equation about how much energy your body needs to expend when it’s hot. All else equal, a person standing in the shade can be up to 30 degrees Celsius cooler than someone just a few feet away standing in the sunlight.
Speaker: 000:40:40
You can find that conversation online at the 1a.org. Emerita, this morning, I will say it was a wonderful, amazing 68 degrees in DC. I was so excited. I had a wonderful few minutes outside before I came into the station. I feel like I’ve been trapped inside for so long. As someone who’s researched the effects of heat on mental health as well, what do we need to know about that?
Speaker: 300:41:02
Yeah. We know that heat has really severe impacts on people’s physical health and what’s starting to become more apparent is that people’s mental health is really impacted as well. We’ve seen in some recent work that my team has done looking at emergency department visits associated with all different types of mental health causes, increases in emergency department visits as summertime temperatures increase. So this is for things like substance use disorders, schizophrenia, self harm, mood disorders, anxiety, stress disorders. There are a whole host of different mental illnesses that present and get exacerbated
Speaker: 000:41:36
during periods of extreme heat. We got this email from Jordan. Amrita, I wonder if you can just answer it quickly. Jordan says, I’ve heard that those who take SSRI medications for anxiety or depression have a more difficult time regulating body temperature and wind up suffering a bit more in excessive heat. Is there any truth to this?
Speaker: 300:41:55
Yes. This is actually, a documented pathway. SSRIs can cause heat intolerance because they interfere with the hypothalamus, which is the temperature regulator in the brain. This also, can increase the risk of things like dehydration, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke. I think SSRIs also have been shown to, interfere with sweat production as well. So, you know, taking SSRIs can impair your body’s cooling ability. They can also disrupt the thirst mechanism. So they can make it harder to know when your body is actually getting thirsty, which is a signal that starts the pathway of dehydration. So again, all of the same things that we’ve been talking about previously, just making sure that you’re staying hydrated, important for folks who have underlying medical conditions that require treatment with SSRIs.
Speaker: 000:42:45
Jibo, I just wanna shift the conversation back to the idea of federal policy, federal funding. The Trump administration is proposing a $1,700,000,000 or about 27% cut to NOAA as part of the 2027 fiscal splint spending plan. How will these cuts affect forecasting, if at all?
Speaker: 400:43:04
Yeah. This is a really important point, and there’s a lot of things that worry me about this, but the most relevant to our conversation is that staff cuts would mean things like weather balloon launches and sensor maintenance are no longer happening. Weather balloon launches, happen regularly. They help us measure wind, temperature, humidity, pressure, and make those severe weather forecasts. And the administration has said that they want to pivot to AI, that they think that this is a way forward in forecasting, but artificial intelligence is only as strong as the data that’s being input. And if we’re not getting that robust data from the field, which takes takes boots on the ground, takes people out there launching the balloons themselves or fixing sensors at sea, then we’re just not the quality of our forecast is going to be severely degraded.
Speaker: 000:43:51
We just have about a minute or two left. I just wanna ask you, Amrutha, if we talk about climate change making it hotter each year and this is our new normal, what should we be thinking about or doing as individuals or at the community level?
Speaker: 300:44:04
We we have a lot of, individual level protective factors. One of the ones that I like to mention is, social networks, reliance on social networks to help us to stay safe during times of extreme weather, including extreme heat. You know, David mentioned earlier, some of the vulnerable populations, including the elderly, making sure that friends are checking in on friends, neighbors are checking in on neighbors or if you know that your loved one has a medication that they’re taking that they might, that might impact their ability to regulate during heat waves, that they have access to the resources that they need. I think there are a lot of other resources that are available, that we’ve been talking about over the course of the last little bit. And, one of the best ways that we can make sure that especially those folks who are vulnerable know about the resources that are available within your community is also through those social networks as well.
Speaker: 000:44:59
That was Emerita Nuri Sarma. She’s an environmental epidemiologist and assistant professor of environmental health and population sciences at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. I wanna thank Jeeva Lang as well for joining us, a staff writer at Heatmap News. Remember, the one a podcast is a great way to catch up on anything you might have missed. It’s where you’ll find our best guests and stories every day. Today’s producers were Arfy Geddie and Thomas Lu. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I’m Nyla Budou in for Jen White. Jen’s out for a few weeks. Join me tomorrow for the Friday news roundup. This is one a.