Name: Brainstorm Health 2024: The Changing Climate is Coming for Our Health
Uploaded: 2024-05-21
Duration: 13 min 31 s
Description: Surella Segu, Chief Heat Officer, Monterrey, Mexico, Dr. Jane van Dis, Associate Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Rochester Medical Center (appearing virtually) Moderator: Maria Aspan, Fortune

Surella Segu, Chief Heat Officer, Monterrey, Mexico, Dr. Jane van Dis, Associate Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Rochester Medical Center (appearing virtually) Moderator: Maria Aspan, Fortune  

Brainstorm Health 2024: The Changing Climate is Coming for Our Health

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Surella Segu, Chief Heat Officer, Monterrey, Mexico, Dr. Jane van Dis, Associate Professor, Obstetrics & Gynecology, University of Rochester Medical Center (appearing virtually) Maria Aspan, Fortune  

Soraya. Thank you so much for joining us and Jane, thank you so much for joining us remotely, Jane. I wonder if I could start by asking you just to tell us why. In fact, you are joining us remotely. Oh, sure. And thank you so much for inviting me. Um I uh when I told you that I could only join virtually, I thought for sure that was going to be a deal breaker. Um But in 2021 I signed a uh a No Fly pledge. Um There is a nonprofit called uh No Fly USA. And uh part of my pledge is that uh I'm gonna find other modes of transportation that are not as carbon intensive. Uh We a study come out just last week showing that the, the thinking around sustainable jet travel um is not matching reality. And that, in fact, we would have to have more farmland than the whole planet even has to create the amount of sustainable jet fuel uh to power our current jet travel. So uh slowing down, not flying uh is one of my goals and that's why I'm attending virtually. Well, we thank you for making the time and I have to say it, I say from this stage of this conference that I flew to, it seems like a radical life altering decision but that it also sounds like that is what is needed right now. The urgency of this climate change situation, I feel, I say as a reporter, it feels like it cannot be overstated and Soraya, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about how you communicate that urgency in public. Well, uh I like to talk about what are the, the heat waves that we are experiencing right now? And this is happening everywhere. Uh particularly well, in, in, since I've been working in Mexico, uh 70% of the, the States or the majority of the States in Mexico City are experiencing heat waves and you've been listening that last year was the, the warmest year, but that is happening and it's been increasing, it is going to be increasing. So I like to say that we are kind of like beyond resilience, we are more into finding ways of uh regenerate, like find how we can regenerate our cities. Uh Because the cities are the places where we experience more heat right now because we are a health care conference, Jane, I wonder if I could start by asking you, you're an OBGYN, could you talk to us a little bit about the links you see and you um and you forge professionally between climate justice and reproductive health. Yeah. So I actually used to live in California. I used to live in Los Angeles and I actually practiced uh for a while, about five years up in Bakersfield. And you can imagine the Central Valley is full of outdoor workers. In fact, um while Black Hispanic or Latino uh persons comprise 32% of the population, they are 40% of us outdoor workers. And so a lot of those outdoor workers would become my patients. And I would actually see some of the complications of, of those who do work outdoors and how it affects their health. For instance, uh that could be increased risk for asthma and obviously increased risk for dehydration. Um A study published last year showed that of 100 and 92 farm workers in the summer on any given day, 33% of those outdoor workers had kidney injury due to elevated heat index. Um and then pregnant women are especially vulnerable to heat. Maternal heat exposure has been associated with increased risk of both preterm, birth, low birth weight and stillbirth for every 1.8 degree rise Fahrenheit in temperature above the mean, there's a 5% rise in stillbirth and preterm birth. So these consequences of our warming world are we, we're seeing that in, in our emergency rooms and in our labor and delivery. So heat is also at the center of what you study from a different perspective. First of all, what exactly is a Chief Heat Officer? And what did you do at Monterey in Monterey? Well, a Chief Heat Officer is an officer in charge of uh leading all efforts in basing what the the impact of extreme heat represents for cities it's uh attached to the major because the the objective is to be uh to have actions to be implemented. So it's not just policy making or raising awareness, but it's also how we can transform cities in a real way. And what are the kind of uh physical transformations in the built environment that we need to do? Give us an example of what, what um what should cities be doing to transform building environments? Well, there are immediate uh actions like of course raising awareness like campaigns for uh extreme heat particularly because uh what Jen was talking about uh illnesses but also deaths are preventable but they are happening but they are preventable. So it's very important that we know what to do in in cases of extreme heat and how we can take care of us and, and uh the citizens of the cities. Uh we can do green roofing, reflecting roofing, uh decreasing the amount of pavement, decreasing the amount of asphalt because this constitutes a lot of um reflecting heat into the city. But also create some strategies at city scale like a green corridors, green like network of parks and green corridors in cities. Uh We can work with in hand by hand with uh the city manager who works with water management because that's another component that is very important. Heat is not an isolated piece, but it's related to uh water management, the quality of air to the amount of vegetation that you have and uh everything is interconnected. So we need to work in an inter uh integral way in cities. You know, it's such an interesting point because we have long known that health care is determined by more than just your genetics and your personal behaviors in this era of climate change. Um Maybe Sara starting with you and then I'll go to Jane, is there enough awareness about how much our environment affects our health care? And and perhaps more importantly, are you seeing appropriate action being taken to improve both? No, I think that we are, we are very short about what we are doing and what we need to do is really think about uh the physical environment, but the natural environment and how we can interconnect both and how, how we can bring in a massive way, particularly in very dense cities uh or very urban cities, like how we can bring more nature and how we can work with the nature that we have in terms of transforming but also uh how close this nature is to the people like uh particularly because I went to another uh meeting, but how the worker goes from home to the workplace and what is that experience for them in the public transportation or even in the car if they walk? How is that experience? And how is the, the working environment too, Jane? And be curious for your answer as well. Well, I'm gonna take um a slightly different approach and discuss the ways in which uh one element which is fossil fuels on which obviously our economy and our lives depend. Um And talk about the way. Uh for instance, um uh the discrepancy of these urban heat islands, I heard on N pr today that um Phoenix has started to open up its um its cooling centers. Um And so we are preparing for obviously another year of above average temperatures across the US. Um I used to live in Los Angeles and in Los Angeles, there could be up to a 20 degree Fahrenheit difference in temperature between uh shady suburbs and uh and urban Heat Island. So very much uh following uh redlining that occurred in Los Angeles back in the fifties and sixties. And so you see market disparities and inequity in terms of how heat is distributed across the population. And what I will say is then the number two way that that fossil fuel is uh affecting the health of, of Americans across the the country this coming summer is going to be in air pollution. So we know obviously that burning of fossil fuels creates a particulate matter. And we actually know that that fossil fuel air pollution. Uh from my perspective, taking care of pregnant women absolutely increases the risk of preterm birth. Um And thanks to uh recent studies, we've also learned that it's responsible for up to 10 million deaths a year worldwide with that number even growing. And unfortunately, when you combine heat with uh fossil fuel, air pollution, particulate matter, um they are, they are additive, they're symbiotic. So, actually, you know, having high density uh air pollution or having a lot of air pollution combined with heat makes both of those those indices worse. Um And we expect, or scientists are expecting that the eastern seaboard might see AAA repeat of what happened last summer with those Canadian wildfires uh throwing that particulate matter down into the, into the United States. And then the last thing I want to mention uh because it, it isn't necessarily always part of the conversation, but it's always part of my conversation because I, I am constantly amazed at how fossil fuel plastics are affecting. Uh my patient's health. I actually, I was sitting waiting in the waiting room for this talk today. A friend messaged me and she said, Jane, I saw your post today about a study showing that uh of, I don't know it was 50 or 60 testes, male testes that were tested for plastics. Um All of the testes were positive for plastics and we saw this in a recent uh study looking at placentas as well. Every single one of the placenta that was tested, it was like 70 plus placentas was positive for plastics. Well, 12% of our global oil goes into plastics. So to me, plastics are a continuum of, of this whole um crisis of the fossil fuel. Um And interestingly enough, uh 75% of the plastics uh that we encounter that make their way into our air and into our water and ultimately into our food and our bodies. I, I am going to stop you there just because I wanna make sure that we get to another. Well, you raise a lot of really important problems and we could, we could spend another 45 we could spend like 45 minutes talking or more. I'm curious about solutions and so I will start with you. We're all aware of this problem. As Jane said, we all lived through last summer. We're preparing for this summer. What solutions do you see and what needs to be done immediately? Well, we need to raise awareness to, to let people know what is happening and also how they can take care of themselves. Uh We are as many cities in the States are doing, preparing cooling centers for people to be able to rest because that's an important thing to do. You can be in outside but then you have to rest and, and allow your body to balance again. And this Jen may know better than me. But uh that. And also um I would say that start working collectively in, in, in doing what we can do each of us, but planting more trees, uh cleaning more uh our environment. And also um I think creating more, more positions even within the industry uh of people who are dealing with these issues in an immediate way. So trying to transform even our, our buildings like how we can create because the, the first idea is that the air conditioning is something that we, we is a solution, but it actually is something that is creating more heat. So how we can find Nature Based Solutions for the process and and also doing research in like bio um biomaterials and other innovations in terms of uh this environment. Wonderful. Well, thank you both so much for joining us and please join me in. Thanking Soa and Jane.