* Our kids; our health

BY AUGUST KRYGER
and FRANNY WHITE
Staff Writers

Climate change isn’t limited to increasing global temperatures. It also has the potential to affect people’s health.

Here in Washington, health professionals are just beginning to look at how climate-related disease, pollution and rising temperatures could affect residents of the Puget Sound region.

As part of the statewide Climate Change Challenge that the governor issued in February, a group of University of Washington researchers formed the Climate Change and Human Health Impacts Team. The group was charged with examining the effects of climate change on human health.

“As we’re conceptualizing it, there are five major areas where climate change is going to have a health impact on Western Washington,” said Roger Rosenblatt, a UW professor of family medicine who heads the health impacts team.

The five areas of focus are: Excessive heat, air pollution, infectious disease, extreme weather events and the psychological and social effects of climate change.

Heat dangers

Heat is already the leading cause of severe weather-related death in the United States. Washington currently has between 400 and 700 heat stress deaths each year, according to a 2004 article in the American Journal of Public Health. But if global warming continues, a recent Columbia University study estimated summer heat-related deaths could increase as much as 95 percent by 2050 in the New York City metropolitan area.

In Washington, heat exhaustion is more likely to occur in the warmer and drier eastern half of the state. But Rosenblatt said it could eventually reach Skagit County under the right conditions. Excessive heat could most severely affect at-risk groups such as the elderly and people with chronic illnesses.

A rise in heart and lung diseases could also be one of the results of climate change-related air pollution. Rosenblatt said that as temperatures heat up, more ozone is built up near the ground, which can cause lung stress and eventual damage.

Where climate change is more likely to affect the North Puget Sound region, however, is in infectious disease and extreme weather events, officials say.

Rise in disease

Infectious disease is one of the more uncertain realms of the climate change debate. But the rise of certain diseases may be linked to climate change, said Joanne Lynn, an environmental health specialist for the Skagit County Health Department.

“We’ve seen in the last couple of years more cases of hantavirus,” Lynn said. “And it’s speculated that the warmer temperatures make it more cozy for deer mice.”

Hantavirus is a pulmonary disease spread through human contact with the droppings, urine or saliva of virus-carrying rodents, such as deer mice. About 35 percent of the reported cases have been fatal, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports. Washington has reported 35 cases since 1985.

Skagit Valley College soccer player Garret Chase, 21, died in 2003 from hantavirus. The county Health Department still does not know how he came into contact with the virus. But Chase’s infection coincided with a rise in the deer mice population following the October 2003 Skagit River flood.

U.S. health officials took note of the disease in 1993, when a sudden human outbreak took place in the Four Corners area of the Southwest. Scientists have since linked that outbreak to heavy spring rains that El Niño brought to the region in 1992. The rains created an abundantly green desert. A booming rodent population resulted, giving humans more opportunities to come into contact with virus-carrying mice.

While environmental changes might bring more diseases on the ground through rodents, health professionals also worry that increasingly warm, wet weather could create a richer habitat for infectious mosquitoes in the air.

“Most don’t realize that malaria has existed in this state before,” Rosenblatt said. “It’s possible, but not very likely, that we could get it again. As public health people, we have to be prepared for the unlikely.”

People become infected with malaria when they’re bitten by a mosquito carrying a parasite that causes the disease. Though there were 1,337 malaria cases reported in the U.S. in 2002, all but five were acquired outside this country. A local malaria outbreak can occur, however, when a person infected elsewhere is bitten by a mosquito here and that mosquito then bites other people.

Disruptive disasters

More intense weather and rising sea levels create other challenges to human health, said Gregg Grunenfelder of the state Department of Health.

Increased flooding and landslides will pose risks to health-care facilities, making treatment during disasters more difficult, said Grunenfelder, who is chairman of another group looking at health and climate change, the Human Health Preparation and Adaptation Work Group. Though separate from UW’s health impact team, the two groups collaborate frequently.

“If it disrupts the infrastructure, like drinking water, there are health effects in that area,” Grunenfelder said.

And then there will the accidental deaths that become more likely as buildings built near bluffs or coastal regions become unstable.

“Those places are more likely to get undermined,” Rosenblatt said. “If you get erosion on those coastal bluffs, people can die.”

‘Climate refugees’

Beyond the individual physical incidents, there are psychological and social problems, as well.

As states throughout the nation experience varying degrees of climate-related problems, cooler places like Washington could become home to “climate refugees” seeking less extreme weather conditions, Rosenblatt said. The northern U.S. will serve as an inviting alternative to many heat-stricken areas.

“If you get more failed states and more people whose environments are destroyed, we’re going to get more of those refugees,” he said. “This will create more conflict and a whole host of health problems that are hard to quantify.”

Earlier this month, Rosenblatt’s team released a report on its findings. The report features general information on the five areas of concern. But now Rosenblatt’s team will narrow its focus to individual counties and cities.

“We’re doing the calculations that will let us bring this down to particular metropolitan areas starting in January,” he said.

‘Prepare and adapt’

Grunenfelder said the research is still in its early stages, but a lot of progress has been made in a short period of time.

“Our effort is to look at how we can prepare and adapt,” Grunenfelder said. “This is a very initial attempt.”

The key recommendations the team will make include requesting that health departments enhance surveillance systems throughout Washington. More emphasis will have to be put on not just mosquitoes, which can carry malaria and West Nile Virus, but also other animals and insects, Rosenblatt said.

Lynn of the county Health Department said her agency will rely on local doctors and nurses to know if more diseases are being spread. Meanwhile, the department plans to increase precautions to prevent these diseases.

“It’s ever-changing, and we’re running as fast as we can to keep up,” Lynn said. “People need to be aware. The more they know, the more they can protect their family’s health.”

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