Portland, OR (September 21, 2016) – Today, health and medical professionals from Oregon joined others from across the country to issue “A Health Professionals’ Declaration on Climate Change,” calling for swift action to protect health from the impacts of climate change.
“We, as public health and medical professionals, reiterate our commitment to address climate change on behalf of our patients and communities. The wide-ranging health impacts of climate change demand immediate action,” the Declaration states.
In Oregon, health and medical experts from physicians to nurses to public health professionals signed the Declaration to highlight the threats that climate change poses to health, particularly for the most vulnerable, including children, older adults, people with chronic diseases like asthma and people living in low-income communities.
“In Oregon and southwest Washington, we have an opportunity to stop bad projects that stoke climate change, including the largest oil-by-rail and largest coal export facilities in the nation,” stated Regna Merritt, Healthy Climate Program Director, Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility. “In our warming climate, we see more air pollution from smog and forest fires. This aggravates asthma and heart disease, among other risks. Low-income and communities of color are the least responsible for climate change but are suffering the most.”
Growing scientific evidence, including the Climate and Health Assessment released earlier this year by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, warns that inaction on climate change will only contribute further to rising temperatures, heavy rain, drought, and other severe weather events. There is also the potential for areas previously unaffected by climate change to see new or worsening health threats.
Climate change can worsen existing health conditions: for example, heat stroke impacts heart disease; increased levels of air pollution and pollen can cause allergy and asthma exacerbations. It can also introduce new health issues like spreading vector-borne and water-borne diseases such as the Zika and West Nile viruses.
As the Declaration states, bold action is needed to clean up sources of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases to reduce the threat this pollution poses to public health. The health and medical community is seeing this firsthand through increasing numbers of cases of climate-related health issues in their patients. This Declaration emphasizes that if we wait to clean up the pollution contributing to climate change, we will experience harm to health that could have been prevented.
