Climate change is a “significant threat to the health of the American people not just in the future but right now,” says a major new report released Monday from the Barack Obama administration.
Titled The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment, the report warns that from children to the elderly, every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change.
The report warns of problems from air pollution, airborne allergens, extreme heat and weather, water-related illnesses, and more.
John Balbus, a Senior Advisor for Public Health at the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences, said that the assessment provides the latest science on questions such as how climate change affects health and who is most vulnerable.
“It starts to answer the key questions of how much of an impact climate change will have on different health problems and how many people will be affected,” Balbus said.
Among other things, the report says extreme heat can be expected to cause an increase in the number of premature deaths, from thousands to tens of thousands, each summer.
One model projected an increase, from a 1990 baseline for more than 200 American cities, of more than an additional 11,000 deaths during the summer in 2030 and more than an additional 27,000 deaths during the summer in 2100.
Climate change will have the largest health impact on vulnerable populations, the report warns. Some of the populations include Indigenous peoples, children, pregnant women and older adults.
The U.S. Global Change Research Program produced the report, which included input from eight federal agencies and more than 100 experts from across the U.S.
The purpose of the report is to inform public health officials, urban and disaster response planners, decision makers, and other stakeholders within and outside of the government who are interested in better understanding the risks climate change presents to human health.
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