Close to Home: Adding fuel to the fire

As we enter the peak of summer with the coronavirus outbreak raging, much of the United States is enveloped in a heat wave that may last for weeks. This summer is on track to be one of the hottest in history.

California, meanwhile, has some of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection and often experiences extreme heat. This is a lethal combination, particularly for Black, Latinx and Native American populations already grounded in long-standing systemic inequities.

Breaking down the COVID-19 riskscape reveals significant racial disparities. New data confirms that Black and Latinx residents are three times more likely to contract the virus and twice as likely to die than whites.

Larger inequalities lie behind this. Minority populations are more likely to live in crowded circumstances that make social distancing impossible. They are overrepresented in essential jobs due to socioeconomic pressure. Due to inequities in health care access, minority populations have lower health status and higher rates of preexisting conditions that can make COVID-19 more lethal. Furthermore, educational disparities and language gaps reduce awareness about mitigating risk.

Pile on a heat wave, and things go from bad to worse.

Exposure to extreme heat is life-threatening, responsible for more U.S. deaths annually than hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods and lightning combined.

The combination of heat and humidity is far more dangerous than most of us realize, resulting in the body overheating and losing the ability to cool itself. Deadly heat stroke can set in, which, even if successfully treated, may leave patients with multi-organ impairment.

Extreme heat hazards are projected to increase as climate change worsens, potentially affecting three-quarters of the world’s population by the end of the century.

Extreme heat and COVID-19 are a stifling dual burden for any community to bear, as they manifest in shockingly similar ways.

People with fewer resources and less adaptive capacity to cope with high temperatures experience more heat stress. Redlining has pushed people of color into smaller, denser housing in less desirable neighborhoods. Use of cement, asphalt and other heat-absorbing materials in buildings creates heat traps, offset by few trees, parks and green spaces.

In 37 cities around the country formerly redlined neighborhoods have half as many trees as the predominantly white neighborhoods in the same cities. Baltimore’s hottest and poorest neighborhood, home to predominantly people of color, is 6 degrees hotter than the coolest neighborhood in Baltimore.

Blacks are 52% more likely than whites to live in areas of unnatural “heat risk-related land cover”; Asians 32% and Hispanics 21%.

Outdoor laborers are at risk of heatstroke in hot conditions. Between 1992 and 2016, nearly 70,000 farmworkers were seriously injured from heat; 783 of them died. In 2016, fewer than two-thirds of California’s agricultural employers complied with heat regulations.

Fear of deportation may discourage migrant farmworkers from seeking medical attention or reporting adverse conditions. Thus, Hispanic immigrants have a risk of heat-related deaths 3.6 times that of whites; 18-24 year-old Hispanics have over 20 times the risk.

Minority populations suffer disproportionately from obesity, high blood pressure and heart disease, which are exacerbated by extreme heat exposure. They develop chronic conditions at an earlier age and are more likely to lack health insurance.

The coronavirus and extreme heat play off one another in a lethal dynamic. Stay-at-home orders and the recent economic downturn have challenged normal solutions to combat extreme heat, such as cooling centers and energy efficiency programs. For those with no air conditioning at home, exposure to heat, humidity and pollution makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19.

As both crises intensify, they point to similar systemic injustices: poor living circumstances, occupational hazards and health care and education inequities.

With the coronavirus, we hold out hope that rigorous protective measures and a vaccine will ease our burden in the not-too-distant future. But no such remedy exists for the increasing heat stress we are experiencing with climate change.

We must learn from and address the disparities that COVID-19 has made clear and acknowledge that these are the same gaps being illuminated by climate change. We must remedy these systemic inequities to truly protect our most vulnerable.

Megan Andersen, a Montgomery High School alumnus, is a junior environmental science major at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. She is home for the summer conducting remote research on the health impacts of extreme heat related to climate change.

You can send a letters to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com.