Climate change causing negative health impacts: report – CBC
Vancouver Coastal Health residents can expect to experience more extreme heat, flooding, drought: report
Feb 13, 2024
A new report from Vancouver Coastal Health says what everyone already knows: climate change is bad for the health of the 1.25 million people living in the region.
“People in VCH can expect to experience more extreme heat, poorer air quality from wildfire smoke, more storms and flooding, longer periods of drought, and numerous ecosystem changes throughout the region,” it says. “These changes affect health directly and acutely through exposure to environmental hazards.”
Many of the recommendations listed in the report align with those already made by other agencies, said Dr. Patricia Daly, VCH chief medical health officer.
The report cites the 2021 heat dome which was a factor in the deaths of 145 people in the region out of the 619 deaths province-wide.
VCH medical health officer Michael Schwandt said people who attended a hospital emergency department for a heat-related complaint during the heat dome were disproportionately from the downtown area, Downtown Eastside and southeast Vancouver.
