Health care providers and Connecticut state legislators warned last week of the increasing medical impact of extreme weather events driven by climate change, while urging stronger action to protect the environment.
In 2023 and 2024, Connecticut experienced more than its fair share of extreme weather events. In June 2023, smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted south, burying the state in a deep haze. June and July 2024 were the warmest in recorded history. Heavy, punishing rains caused severe flooding in southwestern parts of the state, and only two months later, a severe drought sparked brush fires, including one that took the life of a firefighter.
These unsettling patterns cannot be ignored or downplayed as they are having an increased impact on public health. That was the warning given during a state Capitol press conference by the legislature’s Public Health Committee co-chairs, Sen. Saud Anwar and Rep. Cristin McCarthy Vahey, who joined the Connecticut Health Professionals for Climate Action to lay out growing issues presented by the impacts of a changing climate.
“Climate change poses an existential threat to Connecticut agriculture, wildfires increase the need for hospital admissions and we are seeing infectious diseases and hospitalizations grow,” Anwar, D-South Windsor, said. “We have a responsibility to build resiliency and have a prevention policy in place. This is the moment – let us act with urgency and ensure the future we leave is one for generations to come.”
Dr. Sanjiv Godse, a pediatrician and chair of the CHPCA, laid out some of the connections. That wildfire smoke from 2023 worsened health outcomes for people with heart and lung conditions, in addition to making the air dangerous and harmful to breathe. Long periods of hot weather spur heat stroke and heat exhaustion, with a secondary effect of aiding the spread of infectious diseases spread by mosquitoes like West Nile virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis, or EEE. Air pollution gets worse in hot weather, making heat waves even tougher to withstand for those at risk and exacerbating chronic conditions like asthma.
“Climate is a health issue and we need to focus on it in two ways: prevention and harm reduction,” said Godse. “This year, the legislature has introduced critical bills to address these things – solar power, enhanced climate resilience – and with federal climate aid uncertain, state climate action is more important than ever.”
This comes at the same time as the Trump administration and federal government shifts priorities away from climate change, with new Environmental Protection Agency head Lee Zeldin boasting of putting a “dagger through the heart” of “climate-change religion” and rolling back nearly three dozen regulations and funding initiatives aiding environment protection and clean energy funding.
Americans increasingly recognize the connections between climate change and health issues. A Yale study from 2024 found nearly 40% of the country believes it’s having at least a moderate impact on health issues, while more than one in three people identified climate conditions that threaten public health.
“Children’s physiologies and behaviors leave them vulnerable to climate impacts,” said Dr. Sarah Evans, assistant professor of environmental medicine at the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “Children breathe more rapidly, so they take in more pollutants. They’re less able to regulate body temperature and recognize when they’re thirsty. They’re the highest-exposed age group to tick-borne illnesses and excessive heat playing outside. For these reasons, an estimated 88% of illnesses from climate change are seen in children under the age of 5. Children living in underserved and underprivileged communities are at even higher risk.”
It’s under that backdrop that Connecticut has a stronger obligation than ever to pass environmental priority bills, the assembled medical professionals said. They specifically cited policies including climate resiliency work on the municipal level and increased adoption of alternative fuels like solar power currently under consideration by the general legislature in the 2025 session.
