Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I am Aksha Darati this week how
Speaker 1: to beat the heat. In twenty twenty two, the UK
Speaker 1: had a heat wave like no other. This was the
Speaker 1: kind of heat wave that shuts down airports and forces
Speaker 1: railways to stop. Heat like this is rare in the UK,
Speaker 1: and Bloomberg reporter Olivia Rudgard was here in London covering it.
Speaker 2: I remember cycling home. I stayed really late in the
Speaker 2: office and I cycled home probably about half past eight
Speaker 2: or nine o'clock at night. You know, it felt like
Speaker 2: a sort of middle of the day on a typical
Speaker 2: hot English summer's day, and I remember thinking, wow, this
Speaker 2: is something that's really new.
Speaker 1: I grew up in India and I'm used to the heat,
Speaker 1: but here in England, hot sunny days like this one
Speaker 1: tend to be quite unusual. So while the dangers were real,
Speaker 1: the idea that an English summer day could be life
Speaker 1: threatening that was just hard to fathom for so many people.
Speaker 2: For obvious reasons. The cultural association of heat is holidays
Speaker 2: and ice cream and going to the beach and yeah,
Speaker 2: wearing little shorts. And there is something nice about leaving
Speaker 2: the house in the morning and thinking, oh, I know,
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 1: Going to need a jacket.
Speaker 2: There are very few English days that are like that,
Speaker 2: and I think that is one of the big challenges
Speaker 2: for the authorities, like when they're trying to say, okay, well,
Speaker 2: we're not trying to be a total kill joy here. However,
Speaker 2: this is not a twenty five degree sunny day. You know.
Speaker 2: Forty degree heat is something that possibly people have never
Speaker 2: experienced before. And if you're in that all day and
Speaker 2: you have no respite, and especially if you have certain vulnerabilities,
Speaker 2: if you're older, if you have certain medical conditions, it's genuinely.
Speaker 1: Really dangerous, really dangerous, and sadly increasingly common. Heat waves
Speaker 1: are considered silent killers. Unlike other disasters, they don't leave
Speaker 1: behind destroyed buildings, and yet they do kill thousands of people.
Speaker 1: It might be the kind of disaster that's most misunderstood
Speaker 1: and the world is least prepared for. As heat waves
Speaker 1: hit more places in more extreme ways, it's time we
Speaker 1: grappled with them with the seriousness they deserve. That's why
Speaker 1: this week is Heat Weak at Bloombergrain. Across the site,
Speaker 1: we have a series of stories about the surprising impact
Speaker 1: of extreme heat and some of the creative ways people
Speaker 1: around the world are dealing with it. But before that,
Speaker 1: Olivia tells me about a surprising strategy that meteorologists are
Speaker 1: considering to make us all pay more attention to super
Speaker 1: hot weather, giving heat waves a name Olivia. So far
Speaker 1: this year in the UK, we've not had much of
Speaker 1: a summer. There have been a couple of featwave warnings,
Speaker 1: but nothing like the summer of twenty twenty two, where
Speaker 1: I remember walking out from this air conditioned office to
Speaker 1: what felt like being in Delhi. There was this hot
Speaker 1: air that hit you and that was not something Brits
Speaker 1: were used to and it had some devastating impacts.
Speaker 2: Right Yeah, I mean it was really an an unprecedented event,
Speaker 2: which feels like a word we use a lot in
Speaker 2: climate reporting nowadays, but I think it was really one
Speaker 2: of the first times that the authorities, the met Office,
Speaker 2: the health care system has had to cope with an
Speaker 2: event like that, and I think it was a real challenge.
Speaker 2: We're used in the UK too, gray overcast weather. Generally
Speaker 2: the average July temperature is like twenty degree and so
Speaker 2: there was a real difficulty in communicating to people, Hey,
Speaker 2: this isn't beach weather or park weather or going get
Speaker 2: an ice cream weather, especially if you're in a group
Speaker 2: that might be vulnerable, if you're older, if you have
Speaker 2: certain pre existing health conditions. This is genuinely very dangerous.
Speaker 1: And the number of debts on that particular day in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two was astonishing.
Speaker 2: Right, there were several heat events that summer, so that
Speaker 2: wasn't the only heat event that summer. I believe it
Speaker 2: was roughly three thousand deaths that summer that were linked
Speaker 2: to heat. Because when you go to hospital with the
Speaker 2: heat related condition, it doesn't go on your death certificate
Speaker 2: that you died because of a heat wave. It's something else,
Speaker 2: you know, a cardiovascular event or something like that. They
Speaker 2: look at the sort of expected death for that period
Speaker 2: without something like that happening, and then it's called excess deaths.
Speaker 2: That's I think the best available way of working out
Speaker 2: what the mortality is in situations like that.
Speaker 1: And last year was the hottest year on record, and
Speaker 1: this year is likely to be the hottest year, beating
Speaker 1: last year's record. The UK might have been spared, but
Speaker 1: there have been so many heat waves around the world.
Speaker 1: There was a pretty terrible one in Mecca during the
Speaker 1: Hudje there was a really bad one in India that
Speaker 1: led to many deaths, and especially in India, counting of
Speaker 1: debts and heat is not done well enough, and so
Speaker 1: it could have been thousands, but we don't know. One
Speaker 1: of the stories you're working on is trying to figure
Speaker 1: out whether heat waves should be named like we name hurricanes,
Speaker 1: and whether that can help reduce the impact heat waves have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is a debate that's been going
Speaker 2: on in the sort of meteorological community for quite a
Speaker 2: few years, and I think, you know, the people who
Speaker 2: are sort of pushing this idea have really picked up
Speaker 2: on a big problem for heat communication, which is that
Speaker 2: even in places where you don't have the cultural issues
Speaker 2: that you have in the UK, it's difficult to communicate
Speaker 2: I think clearly the risks and potential implications of overheating.
Speaker 2: It's not like a hurricane or a typhoon or an
Speaker 2: earthquake where you can see buildings falling over, and it's
Speaker 2: not something you can visibly see. So I think that
Speaker 2: the idea is to communicate a sense of the emergency
Speaker 2: and the immediacy of the risks, and also to kind of,
Speaker 2: I suppose, make it into something that people are likely
Speaker 2: to sort of like to stick in their brain, so
Speaker 2: something that's more tangible.
Speaker 1: But this is no longer just an academic debate because
Speaker 1: there are places that have tried to do this correct.
Speaker 2: There's been one peer reviewed study that's come out now
Speaker 2: which was about the city of Seville in Spain which
Speaker 2: named a few heatwaves in twenty twenty two. And the
Speaker 2: study is about heat wave Zoe, and they kind of
Speaker 2: found that, yes, among the people who were aware of
Speaker 2: this name, there was a sort of heightened understanding of
Speaker 2: what they should be doing in a heightened level of trust,
Speaker 2: and a few other people that are looking at doing it.
Speaker 2: There was a heatwave last year that was jointly named
Speaker 2: by three meteorological organizations in the sort of south of Europe. Greece, Israel,
Speaker 2: and Cyprus all co named heat wave and they called
Speaker 2: it Cleon. It was a small percentage of people that
Speaker 2: remembered it, but among those people, the level of understanding
Speaker 2: of what to do and the level of trust in
Speaker 2: the authorities was higher. But yeah, it was only six
Speaker 2: percent of people who unprompted remembered it.
Speaker 1: But it's not like just because a hurricane has been
Speaker 1: named that people prepare to deal with the hurricane in
Speaker 1: say the Caribbean or in Florida. They just do because
Speaker 1: they know they get hurricanes and they know what to
Speaker 1: do when a hurricane hits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, this is the central tension of the argument, right,
Speaker 2: Like a lot of the people I've talked to, you say,
Speaker 2: there are a whole bunch of other things we could
Speaker 2: be doing to help people prepare better, make them better equipped.
Speaker 2: Awareness cannot be the viewell and end all.
Speaker 1: So moving beyond awareness, the question of what we as
Speaker 1: individuals and as a society need to do when super
Speaker 1: hot weather descends. That's exactly what Howard emergency medicine physician
Speaker 1: Renee Salas has been working on. Renee tells me what
Speaker 1: extreme heat does to the body and how the entire
Speaker 1: healthcare system needs to adjust to our new reality. Renee,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to
Speaker 3: be here.
Speaker 1: You were based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which saw a heat
Speaker 1: emergency earlier this summer. It was because of a weather
Speaker 1: phenomena called a heat dome, and there was a spike
Speaker 1: in heat related emergency department visits and the city of
Speaker 1: Boston open more than a dozen cooling centers. How did
Speaker 1: you personally experience the heat wave, both as a doctor
Speaker 1: and as a resident.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it brought climate change right into my face.
Speaker 3: And trust me, this is something that I think about
Speaker 3: all the time, but it's a different experience when you're
Speaker 3: living it and you're seeing your patients and communities experiencing it.
Speaker 3: I mean, I actually had issues with my air conditioning
Speaker 3: during that and that made me really understand heat stress,
Speaker 3: as I'm sure we're going to dive into. I mean,
Speaker 3: heat can impact so many things, but it impacts sleep,
Speaker 3: and it also impacts how we process situations. We could
Speaker 3: become a little bit more irritable and that can obviously
Speaker 3: lead to other things. It reminded me of the need
Speaker 3: for backup power when air conditioning and backup air conditioning solutions.
Speaker 3: But I think more importantly, it really showed how we
Speaker 3: have to develop solutions for patients that I had come
Speaker 3: into my emergency department and that colleagues were telling me
Speaker 3: about where they just didn't appreciate what the threats of
Speaker 3: heat are like. And so I think there's this interesting
Speaker 3: phenomenon with heat that it becomes also more humid, and
Speaker 3: climate change is increasing humidity, and that is a really
Speaker 3: dangerous combination because our body uses sweating with which to
Speaker 3: cool us off. But if the more human it becomes,
Speaker 3: the harder it is for us to sweat. So my
Speaker 3: colleague had a story of someone who was out running
Speaker 3: and could normally head run in conditions that were that
Speaker 3: hot as an absolute number, but it's that heat index
Speaker 3: or taking that humidity into account, and he started experiencing
Speaker 3: symptoms of what's called heat exhaustion, which is sort of
Speaker 3: that body's warning signs right before a heat stroke, which
Speaker 3: is a life threatening emergency. And so it was just
Speaker 3: a reminder of how we are in it, and we
Speaker 3: have an enormous opportunity to move forward in a way
Speaker 3: that protects and centers health.
Speaker 1: And you're now one of the leading experts on this
Speaker 1: field that studies both climate change and health, a field
Speaker 1: that probably hadn't been fully established until about the past
Speaker 1: ten years or twenty years. How much of a growing
Speaker 1: concern is heat related health issues when it comes to
Speaker 1: climate issues.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting you bring up. I think my sense
Speaker 3: of where things were twenty years ago is that there
Speaker 3: were trailblazers who clearly saw those impacts, but When I
Speaker 3: came to this field about over a decade ago, there
Speaker 3: was really little engagement for mainstream medical community. But since
Speaker 3: then there's really been a ground shift. I mean, whether
Speaker 3: it's the World Health Organization announcing climate change was one
Speaker 3: of its six strategic objectives, or the National CANABI of
Speaker 3: Medicine in the US having its largest program on climate change.
Speaker 3: But we still lack the essential ingredients, like research funding
Speaker 3: at the scale and scope that's required, at least here
Speaker 3: in the US. You know, you point to heat, and
Speaker 3: I think that heat is often termed a silent killer.
Speaker 3: I think it's underappreciated for how deadly it can be.
Speaker 3: But there was a landmark study that showed that one
Speaker 3: third if heat related deaths in forty three countries which
Speaker 3: included the US in the nineteen nineties and two thousands
Speaker 3: were attributable to climate change, and the lands A countdown
Speaker 3: report which I'm a part of last year and twenty
Speaker 3: three showed that he tests for those over the age
Speaker 3: of sixty five are projected to increase by three hundred
Speaker 3: and seventy percent by mid century, and as we approach
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five, mid century is not that far away.
Speaker 3: On a two degree celsius pathway. So I mean all
Speaker 3: of the shows is that heat is really at the forefront,
Speaker 3: but that's just the tip of the iceberg in regards
Speaker 3: to the harms that are occurring. And so we have
Speaker 3: an enormous opportunity here to really quickly leverage resources to
Speaker 3: address us at the scale scope required.
Speaker 1: All of us at some point have been hot, and
Speaker 1: so we kind of know that heat can be stifling,
Speaker 1: it can sometimes cause exhaustion. But if you are to
Speaker 1: go a little more systematically, what are the categories of
Speaker 1: medical issues that arise because of heat?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I think you know. Before diving into the
Speaker 3: specific categories, I just want to take a quick second
Speaker 3: to set a frame of what happens to the body
Speaker 3: with heat. Simplastically, your body wants to protect the organs
Speaker 3: inside like the brain and the heart, and it does
Speaker 3: that by moving heat from inside to the outside as
Speaker 3: a way to then get rid of it. And it
Speaker 3: does that actually through our skin and sort of two
Speaker 3: key ways. So first it puts more blood near the skin. Second,
Speaker 3: it produces sweat, and then once that sweat is on
Speaker 3: our skin, the heat can be transferred to it, and
Speaker 3: then those drops of water are evaporated and take the
Speaker 3: heat away, and so sweating is really our friend there.
Speaker 3: And so again I just really want to stress that
Speaker 3: humidity is such a key aspect when we think about
Speaker 3: heat and think about how the heat stress is causing
Speaker 3: these multitude of harms that you noted. So the other
Speaker 3: big thing to think about with heat that is important
Speaker 3: as we think about health harms is it can also
Speaker 3: be associated with poor air quality, and so heat actually
Speaker 3: can create more ground level ozone. So in addition to
Speaker 3: high humidity, poor air quality is another thing that often
Speaker 3: comes with extreme heat, and that can also contribute to
Speaker 3: the multitude of health harms. So I mean, as you noted,
Speaker 3: there's heat exhaustion and then the life threatening heat stroke
Speaker 3: which people commonly think about with heat. And there's also
Speaker 3: more minor kind of heat related conditions like rash or cramps, swelling,
Speaker 3: passing out. But these are only a minor fraction of
Speaker 3: the health harms from heat. You know, extreme heat's been
Speaker 3: associated with worsening heart problems, lung disease, kidney issues, poor
Speaker 3: birth outcomes, wors in mental health, violence and aggression, actually
Speaker 3: worse cognition, harder to think, and poor sleep. That's just
Speaker 3: again sort of that broad overview, but it just shows
Speaker 3: that as heat impacts our entire body, it can impact
Speaker 3: every aspect of it as well.
Speaker 1: You talked about sort of second order impacts here, heat
Speaker 1: leading to more violence and heat leading to mental health effects.
Speaker 1: How exactly does that play out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great question, and I think this is
Speaker 3: where we see these different associations from an epidemiologic standpoint,
Speaker 3: and then we have to dive in and try to
Speaker 3: understand what those mechanisms are. So with mental health, for example,
Speaker 3: it's been associated with more anxiety or more symptoms of
Speaker 3: depression in people who have depression or bipolar and actually
Speaker 3: increased suicide. I mean, one study actually found that a
Speaker 3: one degree celsius increase in temperature was associated with a
Speaker 3: twenty two percent increase in the risk of mental health
Speaker 3: related death. And another study found that more people go
Speaker 3: to the emergency room for mental health conditions when it's hot.
Speaker 3: And then I'll just touch on the second piece you
Speaker 3: brought up, and that's you know, sort of that concept
Speaker 3: of violence and aggression, and there have been links that
Speaker 3: have showed that hotter temperatures are associated with higher rates
Speaker 3: of murder, aggravated assaults, mass shootings. It's probably multifactorial. I mean,
Speaker 3: as we talked about your body's redirecting blood from the
Speaker 3: brain to the skin in order to cool yourself down,
Speaker 3: and so perhaps that's affecting different aspects of the brain.
Speaker 3: As I mentioned, it's also associated with poor sleep, and
Speaker 3: that obviously can lead to more problems dealing with violence
Speaker 3: and aggression. So we don't one hundred percent know the
Speaker 3: exact cause, but again I think it's multifactorial.
Speaker 1: And we have come across these statistics around heat related
Speaker 1: deaths in recent years, and some of them have been
Speaker 1: quite spectacular. The European heat wave in two thousand and
Speaker 1: three killed more than seventy thousand people. Here in the
Speaker 1: UK in twenty twenty two, there were a series of
Speaker 1: heat waves and this figure of excess deaths was three thousand,
Speaker 1: where a lot of those deaths are for elderly people
Speaker 1: who are particularly vulnerable in heat waves. But are there
Speaker 1: other types of populations that are at greater risk of
Speaker 1: being affected by heat in fatal ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it's a great question, and I think that
Speaker 3: the take home I want everyone to go away with
Speaker 3: is that we all are at risk for this, especially
Speaker 3: as we get into more and more extreme conditions, and
Speaker 3: even if you have an air conditioned home, you have
Speaker 3: a power outage and then suddenly you do not have
Speaker 3: that ability to cool yourself. Just to take a step back,
Speaker 3: I think about vulnerability in three categories. So I mean
Speaker 3: one is being more susceptible, second is being more exposed
Speaker 3: to the harm, and then third is sort of lacking
Speaker 3: the ability to adapt. First, being more susceptible, I mean
Speaker 3: that can be because of age, as you mentioned, elderly
Speaker 3: children are also more at risk to heat or having
Speaker 3: existing health conditions like heart disease or lung problems. Patients
Speaker 3: on certain medications like blood pressure medications or medications for
Speaker 3: mental health can actually make it harder for our body
Speaker 3: to do that process I talked about in order to
Speaker 3: cool ourselves down. And then second, there are people who
Speaker 3: are more exposed. So for example, in the United States,
Speaker 3: blacks have been shown to be exposed to more extreme
Speaker 3: heat and one of the drivers behind that is the
Speaker 3: concept of redlining, which is a now outlawed racist housing
Speaker 3: practice that supported segregation and limited the economic opportunities available
Speaker 3: to black American families. But even in those neighborhoods that
Speaker 3: were redlined historically are actually hotter today, sometimes upwards of
Speaker 3: twelve degrees hotter fahrenheit. I have to put that in
Speaker 3: context to a global audience. Then non red blind areas
Speaker 3: because of factors like having a lot of man made
Speaker 3: material like asphalt and lack of green space which creates
Speaker 3: these urban heat islands. And outdoor workers is another example,
Speaker 3: because they are outside working in those conditions. And then
Speaker 3: the third category is lacking that ability to adapt, and
Speaker 3: this means you don't have the ability of the resources
Speaker 3: to protect yourself. So this could be a person with
Speaker 3: a disability who can't leave their home during a heat
Speaker 3: wave even though they're getting overheated, or again not having
Speaker 3: the resources to run your air conditioner at the level
Speaker 3: required to stay safe. And so I think people can
Speaker 3: have one of those or many of those. But again
Speaker 3: recognizing that third category of space scially our ability to adapt.
Speaker 3: We all are vulnerable to that in the right circumstance.
Speaker 1: And because this field is young and there's not enough
Speaker 1: research funding coming as is needed. What are things that
Speaker 1: we do not yet know about what heat does, especially
Speaker 1: on extended exposure, and what kind of research is required.
Speaker 3: Just to give an example of some emerging areas. They've
Speaker 3: actually found that microbacteria, for example, ability to be resistant
Speaker 3: to antibiotics increases with heat. And so as I think
Speaker 3: about some of the threats I face in medicine, but
Speaker 3: if heat is actually making that more difficult for me
Speaker 3: to have antibiotics at work, I mean that is a problem.
Speaker 3: And so I think that just shows that we have
Speaker 3: to really understand how is heat impacting all of these
Speaker 3: different areas, but do it in a solution oriented way.
Speaker 3: So we have to think about what we need to
Speaker 3: do from an action standpoint, and then make sure we're
Speaker 3: doing the research that guides those actions. And so I
Speaker 3: think being much more strategic in setting up research questions
Speaker 3: that get us to solutions that protect health and make
Speaker 3: the case for why we need a transition away from
Speaker 3: fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: And one of those solutions that has been deployed in
Speaker 1: recent years has been opening cooling centers and cities. My
Speaker 1: colleagues at Bloombergreen reported on distributing cooling vests to teachers
Speaker 1: who have to be outdoors in places like Phoenix, Arizona.
Speaker 1: I was also reading about how Phoenix had to provide
Speaker 1: rehydration therapy through IV to protect homeless people during heat waves.
Speaker 1: Are there other kinds of creative public health measures that
Speaker 1: have helped people tackle heat?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I'm inspired by so many emerging innovative
Speaker 3: approaches that are happening, and we need to rapidly share
Speaker 3: these experiences across the globe so we can replicate and
Speaker 3: scale what's working. You know, you brought up cooling centers,
Speaker 3: and I think getting back to your previous question about
Speaker 3: what data do we need? So we know cooling centers
Speaker 3: create safe, cool places for people to go, but we
Speaker 3: don't actually know if they always work. Are the right
Speaker 3: people going to cooling centers? And if not, why not?
Speaker 3: Why aren't they getting there? Is it because they aren't
Speaker 3: able to have transportation? Is it because they don't know
Speaker 3: about it? Is it not communicated in their language? So
Speaker 3: there's I think a lot of movement around how to
Speaker 3: dive into things that we know can work, but how
Speaker 3: do we make sure they work better? You know, to
Speaker 3: add to your list of things that you outlined, I
Speaker 3: mean Paris is creating these cool islands, Los Angeles is
Speaker 3: using white paint experiments, Rotterdam is building green rooftops. I
Speaker 3: mean all of that are ways where we have to
Speaker 3: transform our landscape, how we build our cities and our
Speaker 3: buildings to make sure that we can create these cool spaces.
Speaker 3: But obviously, as an embergency medicine doctor, about that individual level,
Speaker 3: because oftentimes I'm seeing a patient in my emergency department
Speaker 3: in the middle of one of these events. So if
Speaker 3: I tell them to go follow up with their primary
Speaker 3: care doctor, they may not be able to actually see
Speaker 3: them in time to intervene in wherever their needs are.
Speaker 3: So you know, we're thinking about how can we create
Speaker 3: coordinated pathways to actually get them energy subsidies that allow
Speaker 3: them to run air conditioners or to weatherize their home.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that's a level of thinking that typically
Speaker 1: public health officials haven't had to do, which is to
Speaker 1: think about the infrastructure that surrounds people who are affected
Speaker 1: by heat related illness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think in my mind, this is that
Speaker 3: all hands on deck moment that we're in because we
Speaker 3: have to think about this in multiple levels. We have
Speaker 3: to put health and equity at the center of our response,
Speaker 3: and we need to recognize that the solutions to protect
Speaker 3: patients and communities. So I mean my patients that I
Speaker 3: see in my emergency departm often exists outside of the
Speaker 3: traditional health sector, and so we because of this all
Speaker 3: inclusive nature, we have to be collaborative and coordinated both
Speaker 3: within our own sector, so kind of between medicine and
Speaker 3: public health, but also across these other sectors. Because you know,
Speaker 3: if you look at the reviews on heat I mean,
Speaker 3: they have tables that are two pages long about all
Speaker 3: the things that we can do to help create cool
Speaker 3: environments and protect patients and individuals. But we have to
Speaker 3: have that toolbox ready, but be able to deploy it
Speaker 3: locally and tailor it to exactly that patient in front
Speaker 3: of us and that community that we're working with.
Speaker 1: After the break, Runny ways in on whether naming heat
Speaker 1: waves might help us better prepare for them. And if
Speaker 1: you've been enjoying this episode, please take a moment to
Speaker 1: rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Speaker 1: It helps other listeners find the show. One thing on
Speaker 1: the table during extreme heat is to potentially give heat
Speaker 1: waves a name, just the way we give hurricanes names.
Speaker 1: What do you think of that idea?
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I love that and Seville I think Spain
Speaker 3: is naming heat waves and I think it's a way
Speaker 3: just to ensure that heat, extreme heat and especially heat
Speaker 3: waves are not silent killers anymore. And that I think
Speaker 3: that idea and that concept really builds on something else
Speaker 3: that's happening here in the United States, and that's that FEMA, So,
Speaker 3: our federal agency that responds to disasters and provides resources
Speaker 3: to disasters, doesn't currently view extreme heat and heat waves
Speaker 3: as a emergency. There's a move to try to ensure
Speaker 3: that it can be classified as a disaster because arguably
Speaker 3: it is the costliest from a human toll perspective, disaster
Speaker 3: than any other extreme weather events, whether hurricanes, bloods, etc.
Speaker 3: And so how do we make that that happen? And
Speaker 3: I think one aspect is naming them is a good way,
Speaker 3: But a second one is how do we actually calculate
Speaker 3: the true human costs of disasters. So the federal government
Speaker 3: tracks weather in climate disasters in the United States that
Speaker 3: are over a billion dollars, but that's only done based
Speaker 3: off of structural damage and so the economic damage that
Speaker 3: comes from those structural costs. But what if we start
Speaker 3: also including healthcare related costs, so the cost of more
Speaker 3: patients going to emergency departments and hospitalizations, And it's really
Speaker 3: hard to put a cost on death, but that is
Speaker 3: obviously something that we do to try to understand that
Speaker 3: full scope. But then heat could then become a financial
Speaker 3: aspect that's tracked and can start to be in line
Speaker 3: with all these other disasters. So I think it's the
Speaker 3: right move. It's the way that we have to go
Speaker 3: to really elevate extreme heat to no longer being a
Speaker 3: silent killer.
Speaker 1: And what tips might you have for people who think, Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm in good health, I don't really get
Speaker 1: affected by heat so much. I know this heat wave
Speaker 1: is coming, I don't have to really worry.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: I think one response that tends to get people's attention,
Speaker 3: at least in my past experience, is what happens if
Speaker 3: the power goes out? And I think most people will
Speaker 3: pause and say, I don't know. I mean, there's obviously
Speaker 3: some who are very well prepared and have backup generators
Speaker 3: and cooling systems, but I think that's very rare. And
Speaker 3: again it's those who have the resources with which to
Speaker 3: be able to do that. We are all in this together.
Speaker 3: And so even if you are sitting there in your
Speaker 3: air conditioned home and a record breaking heat wave, what
Speaker 3: about that neighbor that lives next door. What about the
Speaker 3: you know, the individuals down the street or others within
Speaker 3: your community. And I think some of the most innovative
Speaker 3: things that I've heard that have been really successful to
Speaker 3: build on our growing theme here in our conversation is
Speaker 3: really those community centered supportive approaches, So checking on your
Speaker 3: neighbors and having those one on one connection so that
Speaker 3: way you know you have a disabled, elderly neighbor, you
Speaker 3: know who's checking on that person in the heat wave,
Speaker 3: and if if you're not sure, then why not you?
Speaker 3: Thank you, Renne, Thank you, It was such a privilege
Speaker 3: to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so Olivia. We heard from Renee how much
Speaker 1: heat can affect health and how poorly it is understood
Speaker 1: what heat can do do health. Is there an example
Speaker 1: that sort of sticks out and tells you why we
Speaker 1: must be much more careful than we have been about
Speaker 1: what heat waves can do to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean there's been a whole spate of examples
Speaker 2: this summer, of tourists going on walks in Spain and Greece.
Speaker 2: There was the awful case of Michael Mosley. There's sort
Speaker 2: of UK celebrity who died in the heat but the
Speaker 2: one that I think really kind of brought it home
Speaker 2: to me. There was a case of a family that
Speaker 2: went hiking in California a few years and it was
Speaker 2: when I was actually in California, so I remember reading
Speaker 2: about it in the newspapers at the time, and they
Speaker 2: all died on the trail in really quite surprising circumstances,
Speaker 2: and all of the reporting I remember, you know, at
Speaker 2: the time, right after it had happened, they were suggesting
Speaker 2: all kinds of different causes for why this might have happened.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like chemical spills and fungus, and it
Speaker 2: was really a mystery. And then later on, you know,
Speaker 2: they realized that they'd all been killed by the heat,
Speaker 2: and it was such a tragic case. It was horrible.
Speaker 2: It was really horrible, really young child and their young parents.
Speaker 2: And you know, I think that really brought home to
Speaker 2: me the fact that even for the authorities, let alone
Speaker 2: the general public, it's not something that's expected that he
Speaker 2: would be something that's so deadly, and you know how
Speaker 2: far we are from really taking it seriously as a
Speaker 2: danger to our health.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Olivia, thank you, thank you for listening to zero.
Speaker 1: And now for the sound of the That is the
Speaker 1: sound of a little fan on my desk at home.
Speaker 1: For the first ten years living here in the UK,
Speaker 1: I never needed it, but now I need it every summer.
Speaker 1: Now I might even have to get an upgrade. If
Speaker 1: you like this episode, please take a moment to rate
Speaker 1: and review the show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Share
Speaker 1: this episode with a friend or with someone who sweats
Speaker 1: a lot. You can get in touch at zero pod
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot Net. Zero's producer is miight Lerau. Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: Head a podcast is Sage Bowman and head of Talk
Speaker 1: is Brendan Nuna. Our theme music is composed by Wonderly
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Kira Bindram, Matthew Griffin and Jessica Beg.
Speaker 1: I am Actradrati Back soon.