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Heat, Fire, Water: How Climate Change Has Created a Public Health Emergency August 15, 2019
Heat, Fire, Water and the Public Health Emergency
Extreme heat, billowing wildfires, and water—either too much or not enough—are today’s faces of climate change. PSR board member Alan Lockwood, MD, FAAN profiles the health effects of these frightening phenomena in a new white paper: Heat, Fire, Water: How Climate Change has Created a Public Health Emergency.
The report is organized around these major axes of climate change effects:
- Heat, the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.;
- Water, which because of climate change is increasingly surging, pouring and flooding — or not falling enough; and
- Fire, whose terrifying flames, sometimes-toxic ashes and far-flung smoke plumes inflict death and disease.
In addition, the report devotes chapters to the regional effects of climate change, and to the dangerous difference between world average temperature increases of 1.5° C versus 2°C.
The report paints a clear picture of the climate change health emergency.