Getting harder to find relief at the beach with high heat and bad air
By Colleen Cronin / ecoRI News staff
Business closures, soaring visits to emergency rooms, and
unhealthy air quality warnings are just some of what Rhode Island has to look
forward to as heat waves hit more frequently and for longer periods.
Summertime smog hanging over Ninigret
(photo by Will Collette)
Experts who recently spoke with ecoRI News warned about the
risks the state will face going forward, as temperatures creep up and
100-degree days become more of the norm.
Historically a cool summer destination, Rhode Island hasn’t
always needed to be ready for the consequences of extreme heat — but that time
is coming to end as climate change ramps up.
Why and how is it getting warmer?
The fact Rhode Island is getting hit with more summertime
heat waves, when average temperatures have crept up more slowly, isn’t
necessarily intuitive, Brown University professor Stephen Porder said.
“Why does a 1-degree change in the average temperature mean
all of a sudden you’re going to get so many more 100 degree days?” he asked.
“It doesn’t sort of make sense, since the average temperature isn’t 99, right?”
But take a look at a shifting bell curve, and it starts to
add up, he said.
As average temperatures start to shift even just a little
bit higher, the frequency of more extreme high temperatures increases.
The same goes for warming winter temperatures, too, where an
average creep of 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit transforms a state that used to be
covered in snow all season long to one that only gets snow occasionally.
Real-world consequences
Kate Moretti, an emergency department doctor in Rhode Island
and a public health researcher, has seen the effects of heat waves both live
and in data.
“There is absolutely a relationship between extreme heat and
[emergency department] visits,” she said. “We see a direct correlation between
rising summer temperatures and increasing ED visits.”
During a week with 90-degree heat, emergency departments
across Rhode Island will see about 380 more visits compared to a 70-degree
week, she said.
“Which is significant when you have a system that’s already
under strain,” she added. Hospitals and emergency departments in Rhode Island
tend to be at capacity, “so we don’t have a lot of room or resources when there
are huge surges in patients.”
When heat waves hit, some patients come in with health
issues directly related to the high temperatures, such as heat exhaustion and
heat stroke. Moretti has seen people come in with dangerously high body
temperatures, often people who work outdoors and need to be rapidly cooled down
once they get to the hospital.
But EDs also see higher incidents of other health issues
during heat waves. Heart attacks, kidney problems, and strokes all increase, as
well as mental health visits and traumatic injuries.
Some demographics are more vulnerable than others, including
young children and older adults, and people who don’t have access to air
conditioning, like those Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness.
“On both ends of the spectrum, both extreme heat and extreme
cold, we see negative health impacts,” Moretti said. “However, just the sheer
number of increased harm and death is greater for extreme heat as compared to
extreme cold.”
Air quality and accurate monitoring
When it’s hot outside, air quality tends to get worse,
according to Brown University professor Meredith Hastings.
“Under hotter conditions we speed up reactions,” she said.
“That can lead to the faster production of secondary pollution.”
People also might drive more to avoid being out in the heat
and use their air conditioning, which may add more primary pollutants into the
air.
“The more you throw into the soup, the more you stir it up,”
Hastings said by way of comparison.
Heat waves also often come with less wind and stagnant air
that lets pollutants sit around.
All these factors lead to worse air quality, especially in
areas with specific conditions, something Hastings has been studying through
her project Breathe
Providence.
The project has installed air quality monitors throughout
the city to gather focused readings in different places.
Average air quality is what gets reported and regulated,
but, “We don’t breathe average air,” Hastings said.
For example, in the areas in and around the Port of
Providence, there are more industrial businesses offloading pollutants and
fewer green spaces and trees, which leads to temperatures that can be up to 10
degrees higher than the readings taken at T.F. Green International Airport in
Warwick, where the National Weather Service records the official temperature
for the city.
Proactivity and prevention
Even though temperatures are on the rise, there are still
measures individuals and local governments can take to prevent harm.
Awareness can do a lot to keep people safe and bring ED
visits down, Moretti said, whether that’s choosing not to run outside when it’s
95 degrees or hotter, or knowing that certain medications can make people more
sensitive to hot temperatures.
“If they’re unable to access cooling through other means,
there are places they can go to cool off,” she said.
The Rhode Island Emergency Management Agency runs cooling
centers throughout the state during heat waves that people without reliable air
conditioning can and should utilize.
“We need to look at this problem as a statewide problem, and
be taking kind of direct action toward it, especially as heat waves continue to
worsen across the state,” Moretti said.
She suggested more tracking of the direct and indirect
health impacts of extreme heat, as well as the social and economic disruptions
it causes. Hastings said she would also like to keep studying air quality
issues on the hyperlocal level to help under sourced emergency management
agencies know where to put their resources.
Declaring states of emergency during heat waves could also
help keep people safe, as could improvements to building codes that either
mandate air conditioning and/or use methods that naturally keep structures
cool, according to Moretti.
“This is an under-recognized, very large problem that is
going to require additional resources as we move forward, and this summer is
probably the coolest summer we will have had,” she said. “I expect each summer
moving forward with climate change to get progressively hotter.”
Paris could be an example to Providence to follow for what
to do to prepare for these hotter summers, Porder said. It’s the city most
vulnerable to heat in Europe, not because it’s the farthest south, but because
of how densely built it is.
“It’s not just the air temperature,” he said. “It’s the
built environment that really matters.”
Providence faces similar problems. While its wealthier
neighborhoods have decent tree canopy cover, the lowest-income areas, such as
the Port of Providence area, lack green space.
“In downtown Providence, another big issue is that we’ve
covered huge amounts of space with parking lots,” he said, “which both
encourages people to drive, which then makes the problem worse at the global
scale, but also makes the local scale that much hotter.”
In Paris, to address higher temperatures, the city is
tearing out parking lots and planting trees. It’s also opening up elementary
school green spaces for the summer, so people have places to cool down.
“These are things that Providence could be doing as well,”
Porder said. “We know what’s coming. There’s no excuse for not preparing for
it.”
