CLIMATE SUMMIT: Kids and the Climate Crisis
Below is a video excerpt and transcription of “Climate Change and the Health of West Virginia’s Children,” presented by Dr. Kate Waldeck from the Aug. 24, 2021 WV Climate Alliance summit, "CLIMATE, JOBS and JUSTICE: A Public Forum on West Virginia's Future.” Waldeck works in pediatric critical care medicine at Hoops Family Children's Hospital in Huntington WV, and is an assistant professor at the Marshall University School of Medicine.
TRANSCRIPT:
Excerpt from the Aug. 24, 2021 "CLIMATE, JOBS and JUSTICE: A Public Forum on West Virginia's Future," sponsored by the West Virginia Climate Alliance. VIEW FULL SUMMIT AT: youtu.be/-m54X7PVsC0
Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm always wanting to spread the message about the changes in the health of our children that we can see happening in real time right in front of us. So, I'm going to be presenting on the effects of climate change on the health of children, but just want to also state briefly that much of this also will apply to the adult population.
There are a couple different components to air pollutants that have significant health effects. So, one is ozone, which is a direct irritant to the lungs. And then the other significant entity that I'm going to talk about today are particles which are released from burning fossil fuels, and they're very, very small. So we probably know a little more about this now because of COVID. But basically, they are so small that they're very easily carried deep down into the lungs. And when this happens, they cause significant irritation and direct inflammation in adults, we actually can tie this process to worsening heart disease. And in children, we see a significant impact on the rates and severity of asthma.
This is a picture that's worth a thousand words. So, this is just a picture of a healthy airway, and then an inflamed and spasmed airway, like we see in children with asthma. I think it's important to mention that children are actuall y more vulnerable to the effects of climate change for several reasons. They have something called a 'higher minute ventilation.' So, basically, they breathe faster. So, they take more of the air into their body than an adult does — when you think about the size of their body relative to how much they breathe.
They also eat and drink per pound — and interact more with the outdoors. If they're not outside more, they tend to touch things more. So, air pollutants and asthma — in medicine, we like to say 'where's the evidence?' And so this is an old study, but I think it's so concise that it really shows how important this is. So, during the Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, there was a restriction in traffic patterns because of all of the traffic associated with the Games. And this resulted in decreased traffic of over 20 percent. And ozone levels, as they were measured, also dropped by about 28 percent. What the study showed is that emergency room visits for children for asthma decreased almost by 50 percent. But they did find that actually children's emergency room visits for all other causes that they looked for, were not increased during this period. So that suggests that this finding is more of related than just associated with the drop in ozone.
Climate change affects all children. So, this is a look at the world — and we are part of a global society at this point. And it's estimated that because of some of these factors I mentioned that almost 90 percent of the global burden of disease due to climate change is affecting children under the age of five. And that's because everything I said about them breathing more and eating and more is even truer per pound for little babies and younger children.
Climate change affects West Virginia's children. And we have specific data for that. We are already seeing over the last couple decades more days of severe heat. So, very high temperatures. We're also seeing a lengthened pollen and allergy season and a longer tick season, which I think has actually been pretty dramatic. We also have been seeing, of course, worsening severe flooding events in particular.
This is my middle daughter, Ellie, she's one and this picture. And she that year I think was in the PICU a couple of times and had several admissions for asthma flares. So, this is also something that is a personal for me.
But for West Virginia, we have the statistics. So, the CDC has found that the lifetime incidence of asthma in West Virginia children is 14 percent, which is actually higher than the national average despite the fact that we don't have major urban centers. The hotter days and the longer pollen seasons have led to — as well as the direct air pollutants — have led to a worsening asthma disease burden for the state as well. So, children are have more frequent asthma attacks and more severe asthma attacks.
This is my my friend that deer tick, here. So, one of the other consequences that I think is very tangible is that we have now a longer tick and mosquito season. Now, mosquito-borne diseases like encephalitis are relatively rare, so it's hard to get a trend from them. But tick-borne disease has absolutely increased here in the Mountain State. So, if you look at this — it's been almost a 20-fold increase since the year 2000. And this is directly related, we think, to the the length of the tick season.
So, increased flooding and drought — I want to speak to this point briefly. So, this really hit home with me when I read this — in the last decade, West Virginia has declared an emergency declaration for a flood nearly every single year. So, we all remember the flood of 2016, which did actually result in the death of at least two children. And then we also had another pretty major flood just a year ago. And then this was actually this year. So, this is June of 2021. So, we've already hit our emergency declaration for flooding this year.
Just in conclusion. I think that the evidence is very clear that pollutants and the effects of these pollutants is worsening the health of West Virginia children in a very direct way, as well as adults and all of us who interact with the outdoors.