Climate Change & its Effects on Healthcare (Feb 2025)

From the link between worsening air quality and increasing respiratory illness- to the damage of increasingly powerful storms on healthcare facilities- to the link between a rapidly warming Earth and infectious diseases- to the negative effects on mental health, the changing climate is affecting humanity. Join Kimberley for an evidence-based overview of the topic to learn more about current challenges, what needs to be done to best meet changing needs, which groups are most impacted, and how some groups are approaching those challenges.

1. Climate Change
&
Its Effects on Healthcare:
An Evidenced-based Overview
Kimberley R. Barker, MLIS
Librarian for Belonging & Community Engagement

2. Note:
This presentation (as with all presentations created by Claude Moore Health
Sciences librarians), is based on scientific fact. While I acknowledge that the
concept of climate change and its effects on both the environment and
people is debated, peer-reviewed work from credible sources
overwhelmingly recognizes climate change, the role of humans in that
change, and its effects on healthcare, as fact.

3. LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I respectfully acknowledge that
the University of Virginia
inhabits the unceded, traditional, and
current territory of the
Monacan Indian Nation.
https://www.monacannation.com/

4. LABOR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We must acknowledge that the University of Virginia-
its construction, growth, and development- was
made possible through the coerced labor of enslaved
Africans and African Americans. We are all indebted
to their sacrifice. We recognize that the legacies of
slavery are still present today and that racism
continues to shape our laws, cultures, and
institutions.
Credit: Meggan Cashwell, Ph.D. Adapted from Terah ‘TJ’ Stewart and the Mid-American Arts Alliance.

5. Learning
Objectives
Learn to define
climate change
Learn about the
most pressing
issues
Learn about the
impact of
climate change
on health
Learn about the
strategies for
managing climate
change
Learn about
climate change
indicators
Learn about
important events in
the history of climate
change study

6. What is climate change?
•“Climate change is a long-term change in the average weather patterns that
have come to define Earth’s local, regional and global climates.”- NASA
•“Climate change refers to significant changes in global temperature,
precipitation, wind patterns and other measures of climate that occur over
several decades or longer.”- UC-DAVIS

7. Climate
Attribution
Science
•a scientific process for establishing the principal causes
or physical explanation for observed climate conditions
and phenomena.
•attribution requirements for a detected change are:
•a demonstrated consistency with a combination
of anthropogenic (aka “intentional, non-
malicious behavior by humans that nonetheless
harms the environment”) and natural external
forcings
•an inconsistency with "alternative, physically
plausible explanations of recent climate change
that exclude important elements of the given
combination of forcings."

8. A Brief History of Climate Change Events, 1
•Severe droughts precipitated the exodus of early humans from
Africa
•Climate observations date back to ancient Greece and Rome
•Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Plato spoke about droughts and
subsequent famine due to extreme weather events
•Scientists theorize that abrupt climate change contributed to the
fall of the Maya civilization

9. A Brief History of Climate Change Events, 2
•The 1800s- beginnings of the Second Industrial Revolution
•1816- The Year Without a Summer
•Famine: particulates from the explosion of Mount Tambora blocked sunlight
•Disease: Drought, then flooding, caused mutation in cholera bacteria in the Bay
of Bengal; spread from Asia because none were resistant to the new strain
•1824- Joseph Fourier
•Discovered the process whereby gases in the atmosphere trap the sun’s heat
and coined the term “greenhouse gases”
•1860s- John Tyndall
•Measured the capacity of water vapor and CO2 to trap infrared light
•1896- Nobel Prize winner Svante Arrhenius was the first to calculate human-driven
contributions (through coal-burning) to the “greenhouse effect”, a term that he
coined

10. A Brief History of Climate Change Events, 3
•1957- Roger Revelle (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) and Hans Suess (U.S. Geological Survey)
discovered thechemical pathways of ocean CO
2uptake. Findings showed they had limited ability to
absorb the CO
2 released through burning fossil fuels. Refinement of their calculations hasn’t changed
the basic conclusion.

•1965 President Johnson said publicly,"[t]his generation has altered the composition of the
atmosphere on a global scale through ... a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil
fuels."
•In 1969 Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was warning of a dangerous sea-level rise of 10 feet or more.
"Goodbye New York" he said. "Goodbye Washington.”
•“Over a ten-year horizon, extreme weather and climate-change policy failures are seen as the gravest
threats.”
•from The Global Risks Report (World Economic Forum) 2019

11. Climate Change Indicators
Glacier and sea ice melt
Increases sea level
Sea level
Causes change in
precipitation
Affects the amount of
groundwater and
surface water
Causes flooding-
threatens coastal
communities and
infrastructure
Determines which plants
and animals can live in
an area
Global temperature
Surface temperatures
have risen at a rate of
0.15 every decade since
1901
Rising sea temperatures
Oceans absorb more
than 90% of heat
trapped in atmosphere
Affects marine
ecosystems, breeding,
and migration of marine
species.
Can lead to higher
precipitation, tropical
cyclones, and drought

12. How do we
know that
climate
change
negatively
impacts
health?
Research!

13. The Cost of
Climate
Change
•Human
•WHO estimates an additional 250,000
deaths between 2030-2050 because of
complications caused by climate
change.
•Currently, 150,000 deaths annually are
caused by climate change.
•Financial
•By the year 2030 (according to the
World Health Organization) the cost of
direct damage to health is estimated to
be between $2-4 billion/year

14. How Climate Change Leads to Deaths
- Directly
•Extreme heat
•Air pollution
•Flooding
•Storms

15. How Climate Change Leads to Deaths, 2
•Indirectly
•Undernutrition
•Increasing evidence suggests that “rising carbon
dioxide concentrations adversely affect the nutritional
quality of major cereal crops, including lowering the
levels of protein, a range of micronutrients, and B
vitamins” and reduces the yields of vegetables and
legumes, leading to increase of noncommunicable
diseases

16. How
Climate
Change
Leads to
Deaths, 3
•Indirectly
•Poverty
•Increased heat exposure
leads to less labor
productivity and crop failures
•Without investment in
climate-resilient
development, 100 million
people may be forced into
extreme poverty (with its
attendant health concerns)
by 2030

17. Pressing
Climate
Change
Issues
•Air quality/pollution
•Heat/warming

18. Air Pollution

19. The EPA tracks
air pollutants
in two ways:
•Air concentration
•measuring pollutants in
the ambient air at stations
across the U.S.
•Emissions of air pollutants
•engineering estimates of
the total tons of pollutants
released into the air each
year.

20. Air Pollution:
Six Major
Pollutants
PARTICLE
POLLUTION
GROUND-LEVEL
OZONE
CARBON
MONOXIDE
SULFUR OXIDES NITROGEN
OXIDES
LEAD
Regulation (setting permissible levels) of the six is based on human health and environmental criteria.

21. Air Pollution:
Findings
from
Carnegie
Mellon
University
•“Recent Increases in Air Pollution: Evidence and
Implications for Mortality”
•Between 2009-2016, average fine particulate
matter decreased by 24.2%
•Between 2016 and 2018, average fine particulate
matter increased by 5.5%
•Causes:
•increases in economic activity
•increases in wildfires
•decreases in Clean Air Act enforcement actions
•Costs of the increase
•9,700 additional premature deaths in 2018
•damages of $89 billion

22. Air Pollution: Health Impacts
•Respiratory illness and damage
•Fecundity (DNA fragmentation in
sperm; motility)
•Inflammation
•Cardiovascular disease
•Impaired lung function
•Allergies and asthma
•Altered thyroid function
•Malnutrition due to poor crop
yield/ food insecurity
•Cancer
•Heart disease
•Stroke

23. Heat/Warming Temperatures

24. “Temperature data showing rapid warming in the past few decades, the latest data going up through
2023. According to NASA, Earth’s average surface temperature in 2023 was the warmest on record
since recordkeeping began in 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. On top
of that, the 10 most recent years have been the hottest.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

25. “In 2024, global temperatures forJune through
Augustwere the hottest on record, narrowly topping the
same period in 2023. The exceptional heat extended
throughout other seasons, too, with global temperatures
breaking records for 15 straight months from June 2023
until August 2024, according to scientists from NASA’s
Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS).”

26. “The first month of 2025 was Earth’s warmest January in
analyses of global weather data going back to 1850,
NOAA’sNational Centers for Environmental Information, or
NCEI, reported Feb. 12.NASAalso rated January 2025 as the
warmest January on record, 1.59 degrees Celsius (2.86 °F)
above the 1880-1899 period, which is its best estimate for when
preindustrial temperatures occurred. This beat the previous
record from January 2024 by 0.12 degrees Celsius (0.22 °F). The
EuropeanCopernicus Climate Change ServiceandBerkeley
Earthalso rated January 2025 as the warmest January on
record.”
-Yale Climate Connections
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/02/unexpectedly-
january-2025-was-earths-hottest-january-on-record/

27. Extreme
weather
events
associated
with
heat/warming
•Tornadoes*
•Hurricanes*
•Droughts*
•Heatwaves*
•Heavy rainstorms → flooding*
•Wildfires* → Contribute to climate change
through the release of massive amounts
of carbon dioxide
*event can cause loss of life, property,
livelihood

28. 2024 was the warmest on record
According to separate analyses by
NOAA, NASA, Copernicus Climate
Change Service, and the UK Met Office
- https://www.noaa.gov/news/2024-was-worlds-warmest-year-on-record

30. Rising temps negatively impact crop yields
•For every 1 degree Celsius that the Earth warms:
•corn yields will drop an average of 7.4%
•wheat yields will drop an average of 6%
•rice yields will drop by 3.2%
•soybean yields will drop by 3.1%
“Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates”

31. Rising temps cause drought, which is more bad news for crops.
Earth’s temp
rises; water
cycle speeds up
due to
increased
evaporation.
Evaporation
puts more
water in air;
increases
precipitation
increases
storms and
flooding, but
increases
drought in areas
away from
storm paths
Drought impacts
crops through
slowed growth,
decrease of
vitamins and
nutrients in the
plants
Decreased
vitamins and
nutrients leads to
poor nutrition for
affected
populations

32. Rising temps
mean lost
productivity
•“… in the southern US, businesses
lost up to 20 percent of their
potential daylight work hours in
2018’s hottest month. The drop in
productivity translates directly into
economic losses: Across the world
in 2018, 133.6 billion potential work
hours were lost due to heat.”
https://www.wired.com/story/how-the-climate-crisis-
is-killing-us/

33. 2023 State of Climate Services: Health
“The interconnection between climate and health is undeniable. The
climate, exacerbated by climate change, poses systematic and
serious threats to human health. Climate change is documented to
be impacting human health in many complex ways, including by
leading to death, injury and illness from heat stress, the disruption of
ecosystems and food systems, increases in food-, and water- and
vector-borne diseases, and exposure to air pollution. The 2023
edition of the WMO State of Climate Services report focuses on
health, which highlights the importance of climate services and
information in protecting lives and livelihoods.”
- https://library.wmo.int/records/item/68500-2023-state-of-climate-
services-health

34. Health
problems
related to
increased
heat/warming
•Mental health
•According to the CDC, there is a direct
correlation between extreme heat and suicide
completion
•Drought/lack of green space negatively impacts
human mental health
•According to the EPA, more than 9,000
Americans have died of heat-related illnesses
since 1979
•Increased illnesses, including:
•Lyme disease
•West Nile virus
•Ragweed pollen allergies

35. From “Global Risk of Deadly Heat”, 2017
•“Based on the climatic conditions of those lethal heat events, we
identified a global threshold beyond which daily mean surface air
temperature and relative humidity become deadly. Around 30% of
the world’s population is currently exposed to climatic conditions
exceeding this deadly threshold for at least 20 days a year. By
2100, this percentage is projected to increase to∼48% under a
scenario with drastic reductions of greenhouse gas emissions
and∼74% under a scenario of growing emissions. An increasing
threat to human life from excess heat now seems almost
inevitable, but will be greatly aggravated if greenhouse gases are
not considerably reduced.”

36. Plastics
•In 2017, China stopped buying U.S. recycling
•Because the U.S. has no real organized recycling program, recycling
ended for the most part
•Used plastics are baled and stored (where they leak into ground water)
or are burned (releasing toxins into the air)
•Chemicals in plastic have been linked to metabolic disorders (including
obesity) and reduced fertility.
•Every human on Earthis ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week;
“dosing us with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to
cancers, hormone disruption, and developmental delays.”
- “Planet Plastic”-

37. Plastics, 2
•“Revealed: plastic ingestion by people could be equating to a credit card a week”-
https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?348337/Revealed-plastic-ingestion-by-people-
could-be-equating-to-a-credit-card-a-week
•Maybe not, though
•Martin Pletz, Ingested microplastics: Do humans eat one credit card per week?, Journal of
Hazardous Materials Letters, Volume 3, 2022, 100071, ISSN 2666-9110,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hazl.2022.100071.
So maybe it’s not that bad?

38. Plastics, 3
•It’s not JUST microplastics, which could be building up in our livers, brain, arteries,
lungs, circulating in the body, etc.
•It’s also the chemicals IN the microplastics, which can affect “…hormones…
reproductive health, increase therisk of some cancersand causemetabolic
problemslike obesity, among other things.”
•Phthalates
•bisphenol A, or BPA
•PFAS aka “forever chemicals”

39. Climate Change
& Healthcare
Impacts to Health
&
Healthcare Facilities

40. Negative Environmental Effects caused by
Healthcare Facilities
•Emission of greenhouse gases
•Poor management of waste
(biological, chemical, radiological)
•“Our health care facilities are part of the problem in terms of the carbon
emissions that we create that actually does harm to the patients that we
hope to serve…The health care industry is faced with this transition to
producing less carbon, less greenhouse gas emissions in the care we
provide, and I think physicians have an important voice in that discussion as
well.” – Dr. Rebecca Philipsborn

41. The Impact of Climate Change on
Healthcare Facilities
•Facilities must be built in such a way that
they’re able to withstand the climate
change stressors that are specific to their
region
•Sustainable energy source
•Waste disposal
•Architecture appropriate to events in
the areas in which they’re located
(flooding, wildfires, etc)
https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/climate-resilient-and-environmentally-sustainable-health-care-facilities

42. Fundamental
Requirements for
Providing Safe &
Quality Care in the
Context of Climate
Change (according
to the World Health
Organization)
•Health workforce
•Adequate number of trained humans
empowered and informed
•Water, sanitation, hygiene, and health care waste
management
•Safe management of healthcare waste;
sanitation
• Energy
•Sustainable services
•Infrastructure, technologies and products
•Appropriate infrastructure, technologies,
products

44. How is climate
change affecting
health/healthcare?
•Increases in:
•Heat-related illnesses
•Infections
•Asthma
•Mental health disorders
•Poor perinatal outcomes
•Adverse experiences from trauma and
displacement
•Infectious diseases
•Disaster-related disease, injury, and death

45. Two Responses
to
Climate Change
•Adaptation- attempts to manage
the impacts of climate change
•Mitigation- attempts to reduce
the causes of climate change

46. Adaptation
Strategies for
Air, Water,
Land
•Smart growth communities
•Smart building
•Reduce emissions
•Maintain/restore wetlands
•Shoreline maintenance
•Preserve/improve water quality
•Habitat preservation
•Contaminated site management
•Groundwater remediation

47. Adaptation
Strategies
for Public
Health (EPA)
•Extreme heat
•Raise awareness
•Offer incentives for reducing heat islands
•Establish urban forestry programs
•Retrofit public buildings
•Add heat mitigation into policy, planning,
design, and building standards and codes
•Water quality
•Understand (and plan for) seasonal and
geographic waterborne illness risks
•Assess vulnerabilities
•Air quality
•Understand health impacts of events such
as wildfires

48. Source: CDC

49. Mitigation Strategies
•Reduction of energy consumption
•Reduction of agricultural emissions
•Alternatives to fossil fuel
•Geoengineering
•Management
•Global
•Local
•Personal

50. Calgary
Canada
Climate
Program

51. How can Healthcare
Professionals Respond to
Climate Change?
Education, Practice, Combating Mis/Disinformation

52. Education in medical and nursing schools
•Adopt educational frameworks such as the one proposed by Phillipsborn,
et, al., which is predicated on three questions:
•What are the harms to health from climate change?
•How does climate change require adaptations in our clinical practice?
•And how does climate change disrupt health care delivery?”
- “Climate Change and the Practice of Medicine”, Academic Medicine: September 8, 2020.
https://journals.lww.com/academicmedicine/Abstract/9000/Climate_Change_and_the_Practice_of_Medicin
e_.97003.aspx

53. Practice
•Prepare for interruptions to healthcare due to climate-related disasters
•Service interruptions
•Supply chain interruptions
•Educate patients about what climate change means
•Talk with patients about the risks that climate change pose in the environment in
which they live
•Health risks
•Natural disaster preparedness

54. Mis/Disinformation
•The Climate Deception Dossiers
•85 internal memos leaked from the fossil fuel industry
•Forged letters to Congress
•Fake grassroots organizations
•Secret funding of research by a supposedly independent scientist
•Efforts to create uncertainty about climate science
•Industry has known about climate change since at least the 1970s
•1995- internal memo written by a team headed by a Mobil Corporation
scientist distributed to many fossil fuel companies.
•report warned unequivocally that burning the companies' products was
causing climate change and that the relevant science "is well established
and cannot be denied.”
•Created misinformation campaigns to fool the public about the effect of
fossils fuels on climate change

55. Mis/Disinformation, 2
•Plastics manufacturers have known since the 1970s that plastics couldn’t be recycled,
but spent millions of dollars promoting it to the public
•Since 1950, 6.3 trillion kilo of plastic waste has been produced and not recycled even
once
•Every human on Earthis ingesting nearly 2,000 particles of plastic a week; “dosing us
with five grams of plastics, many cut with chemicals linked to cancers, hormone
disruption, and developmental delays.”
•“Planet Plastic”-https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-
features/plastic-problem-recycling-myth-big-oil-950957/

56. Mis/Disinformation, 3
•American Chemistry Council- trade group that represents plastic resins-producing oil and
petrochemical companies.
•2016, “the ACC commissioned a study by the consultancy Trucost — ‘the world’s
leading experts in quantifying and valuing the environmental impacts’ from industry.
The ACC paid for the study to demonstrate that plastics are not easily replaceable,
and that many common substitutes — particularly glass — carry higher
environmental costs when factoring in weight for transportation. The Trucost finding
that the ACC does not trumpet? ‘The environmental cost to society of consumer
plastic products and packaging was over $139 billion in 2015,’ the report reveals.
Without a dramatic change in course, Trucost predicts, that annual figure will soar to
‘$209 billion by 2025.’”
- “Planet Plastic”-
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/plastic-
problem-recycling-myth-big-oil-950957/

57. Thank you!
Both this slide deck and a recording of the class will be made available to you.

58. RESOURCES
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66. RESOURCES
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67. RESOURCES
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68. RESOURCES
•Climate Disinformation- https://www.ucsusa.org/climate/disinformation
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•WASTE ONLY: How the Plastics Industry Is Fighting to Keep Polluting the World

69. Resources
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70. Resources
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71. OTHER RESOURCES:
•Martin Pletz, Ingested microplastics: Do humans eat one credit card per week?, Journal of Hazardous
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experts-follow-twitter
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•AGMIP- https://agmip.org/#
•Feeling discouraged? Google “solar punk” for some inspiring artwork & ideas about how we can reverse
course on climate change.

72. Questions?
Please reach out:
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