Last month, New Mexico experienced its hottest June ever recorded – that’s according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Amid this recent uptick in heat, a large group of health professionals held an extreme heat summit Thursday to identify and discuss the dangerous public health consequences of climate change.
Symptoms of prolonged exposure to extreme heat can wreak havoc on the human body.
On the mild end, it’s dizziness or excessive sweating. On the opposite, it’s confusion, nausea and sometimes organ failure.
One of the featured speakers at the summit hosted by Healthy Climate New Mexico was Chelsea Langer, an epidemiologist with the New Mexico Department of Health.
“Frequently we talk about extreme heat and the effects of extreme heat, but we actually start seeing the effects of heat at temperatures that, especially here in New Mexico, we would not consider anywhere close to extreme,” she said.
Composed of health care and public health professionals, the group staunchly advocates for climate solutions that both protect health and promote equity, according to their website.
Langer and many others discussed how heat is secretly driving negative public health outcomes among those with substance use disorders, killing cognitive function in adolescents and exacerbating inequities in manufactured housing communities.
These, among many other health impacts, have professionals like Dr. Pope Moseley – another featured panelist with Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions – worried. That’s mainly because existing heat data from researchers and government agencies is too general, and needs to be individualized.
“Our vision is that, using big data, we can combine health data and climate data and begin to find solutions,” Dr. Moseley said. “We need to figure out what is actually happening and begin to craft some solutions.”
While the data available is less than desirable, some policy solutions are already floating about.
Summit participants outlined priorities for state and local governments that include establishing cooling centers and preventing utility shut offs during heat waves. Though, they also want medical professionals to label extreme heat as a “mass mortality event,” to properly prepare for and allocate resources to handle upticks of hospitalizations.
That, and Dr. Moseley wants the general public to understand how dangerous extreme heat can be.
“You can go from being completely healthy to explosive heat stroke in 20 minutes of exertion in the heat,” Dr. Moseley said. “Heat stroke is a catastrophic illness.”
According to a dashboard created by New Mexico Public Health Tracking, since April 1st, there have been 505 heat-related emergency department visits statewide – with 38 reported cases in the last seven days.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a health and heat tracker tool in 2020 that shows emergency department visits for heat across the country. Last year the tracker showed huge heat impacts. Officials told NPR they are seeing the same trends this summer.
