A Canadian doctor blamed 'climate change' for the patient's asthma. It came after he discovered that an exceptional heatwave and poor air quality contributed to the patient's worsening health.
Dr. Kyle Merritt, who works at a hospital in Nelson, British Columbia, said he made his first-ever 'climate change' clinical diagnosis after seeing a patient having difficulty breathing. The environmental risks drove him to make his diagnosis.
"If we're not looking at the underlying cause, and we're just treating the symptoms, we're just gonna keep falling further and further behind," the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media. He added he tried to process what he saw right before his eyes.
UNDATED: In this undated image an asthma inhaler is seen dispensing a dose of the drug. A report released on May 3, 2005, to mark World Asthma Day claims that one person dies from asthma every hour in Western Europe.
Canadians Die Due to Heatwave
The decision came shortly after an unprecedented heatwave in June. According to NDTV, the incident claimed the lives of roughly 500 Canadians over five days as temperatures soared beyond 49 degrees Celcius (121 degrees Fahrenheit).
When the heatwave receded, another health danger emerged from dense smoke from wildfires, which harmed air quality.
Merritt's and other physicians' findings throughout the western Canadian province inspired his colleagues to form Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health.
According to the website, healthcare professionals established the group to push for improved health by conserving the environment. They expressed their concern about the climate problem and its potential health consequences.
According to the doctors, their patients were subjected to extreme weather events during summertime. They added that temperatures surged beyond 40 degrees Celsius in June, exceeding all previous records. Air pollution from wildfires, they claimed, reached 43 times the amount of acceptable standards in July and August.
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Climate Change Joins Emergency Room
Nelson's air turned the color of pea soup this summer, as it has several times in recent memory, resulting in an increase of patients with respiratory difficulties. Time Colonist said the Interior of British Columbia suffers from some of the country's worst effects of air pollution.
According to a 2021 Health Canada review on the effects of air pollution on human health, the ten census divisions in the country with the highest exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) were all in B.C.'s Interior between 2013 and 2018.
Half of them - including Central Kootenay, where Nelson is located - were among the top ten census divisions with the country's highest per capita rates of premature mortality.
Doctors have always struggled to clinically correlate mortality and serious disease to air pollution, similar to death by heat. This summer's wildfire season altered everything for Merritt.
Climate Change Now Alters Consequences For Human Health
Climate change's consequences on human health have been well established.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, global warming will exacerbate some existing health problems while introducing new ones.
However, the World Health Organization's (WHO) predictions are considerably direr. According to the organization's website, climate change will kill roughly 250,000 people every year between 2030 and 2050 due to starvation, malaria, diarrhea, and heat stress.
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Check out more news and information on Climate Change in Science Times.
