Groundbreaking study quantifies US health costs of climate change-related disasters and disease

Natural Resources Defense Council: Health costs exceeding $14 billion dollars and over 760,000 interactions with the health care system, are among the staggering figures resulting from a key set of climate change-related events in the United States during the last decade, according to a first-of-its-kind study published in November 2011 edition of the journal Health Affairs and co-authored by NRDC scientists.

“When extreme weather hits, we hear about the property damage and insurance costs. The healthcare costs never end up on the tab. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there,” said lead author Kim Knowlton, NRDC Senior Scientist. “Right now, there’s a gaping hole in our understanding of the health-related costs of climate change. This report begins the work to fill that void. Only by having a clear sense of health impacts and their costs, can we work to reduce them.”

The NRDC study is the first to develop a uniform method of quantifying the associated health costs for extreme weather and disease events that are expected to be exacerbated by climate change. The analysis spotlights cases in six specific categories in the U.S. occurring between 2002 through 2009, including: Florida hurricanes, North Dakota floods, California heat waves and wild fires, nationwide ozone air pollution, and Louisiana West Nile virus outbreaks.

This group of events resulted in an estimated 1,689 premature deaths, 8,992 hospitalizations, 21,113 emergency room visits, and 734,398 outpatient visits, totaling over 760,000 encounters with the health care system. Such extreme climate-change related events and their impacts are projected to increase in severity and frequency as climate change continues to go unchecked....