It’s hot. Last week as I was writing this article, The Washington Post reported that record temperatures and high humidity were creating a “heat dome” over the South and feels-like temperatures above 100°F could be expected to linger. In fact, on July 17, it was reported that the Earth’s average temperature broke records every day for the previous two weeks.
According to the weather station in my backyard in Sterling, there has only been one day in all of July that the high temperature was below 90 (It was 88.7 on July 10), and the average daily humidity has been in the upper 70’s to 90’s with daily high humidity above 91%. Again, it’s hot. Dangerously hot.
On average, 702 heat-related deaths occur each year in the U.S. Over 67,500 ER visits per year are for heat-related emergencies, and the US has an annual average of 9,235 heat-related hospitalizations.
For the first week of July 2023, the CDC reports 401 out of every 100,000 ER visits in the Southeast were for heat-related illnesses.
The CDC’s Heat & Health Tracker forecasts 9 days of extreme heat for July in Glynn County, where extreme heat is defined as a high temperature above 95% of historical temperatures for that day. The Center further predicts that residents of Glynn are especially likely to experience adverse health outcomes due to the heat.
The Social Vulnerability Index (CVI) is a measure of how vulnerable communities are to public health emergencies like extreme heat. Glynn County as a whole ranks moderate to high by this index. Census tracts in and near downtown Brunswick have CVI’s as high as 0.985 on a scale of 0 to 1. Between April 1 and July 21 of this year, Southeast Georgia Health System’s Brunswick and Camden campuses saw 47 heat-related cases in their emergency room or other observation and had 5 patients admitted for heat exhaustion.
The economic impacts of our vulnerability to extreme heat are great.
The people most likely to need medical care for heat-related illness are also least likely to have insurance or to be able to pay for medical care: the very young, the very old, those with disabilities or pre-existing illnesses, and households who struggle to pay for air conditioning or those without air conditioning altogether.
And, perhaps the most vulnerable among us are those who do not have houses to duck into for protection from the heat. Anyone who reads this paper regularly knows Brunswick has a significant population of houseless persons. We often think of them during the cold months when we are encouraged to donate blankets, jackets, socks, and gloves to organizations serving them. But, extreme heat can be just as perilous for unhoused individuals and possibly more so because these individuals tend to live in localities like Brunswick, where we experience more days of extreme heat than extreme cold.
Besides the healthcare costs, heat-related injury puts a strain on the greater economy through decreases in productivity. Regardless of one’s conditions at home, those who work in the heat (e.g. construction, lawn maintenance, etc.) are at increased risk. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2020, among U.S. occupational injuries or illnesses resulting in days away from work, 1,940 were due to exposure to environmental heat versus only 190 from exposure to environmental cold.
We would do well to implement strategies for prevention— free cold water, public cooling centers, amended work hours for workers who must be outside to avoid the heat of the day, public support for homeless shelters.
Meanwhile, if you can, stay inside, drink plenty of water, and maybe give away a bottle or two to someone else who needs it.
Dr. Melissa Trussell is a professor in the School of Business and Public Management at College of Coastal Georgia who works with the college’s Reg Murphy Center for Economic and Policy Studies. Contact her at mtrussell@ccga.edu. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the College of Coastal Georgia.
Reg Murphy Center