Amid Climate Change and Inequality, ‘Heat Islands’ Pose a Threat
Sourced from US News
Last summer, as Portland, Oregon, began to sizzle under a brutal, triple-digit heat wave, Vivek Shandas installed a window air conditioner in the bedroom of his home. It's the first such appliance he's owned since moving two decades ago to the City of Roses, a place known for its relatively temperate climate.
"My spouse ran out and got one, like, a week before" the daytime temperatures soared past 100 degrees, says Shandas, a climate adaptation professor at Portland State University. "I installed it, and we ran it all night. But even then, the temperature didn't get below 85, and my son and our two dogs all huddled into the bedroom."
Though it wasn't as effective as he'd hoped, Shandas, who studies "heat islands" – urban areas that are warmer than surrounding outlying areas or even nearby neighborhoods – says he's lucky: He can afford to make his bedroom a little less uncomfortable when the temperatures rise. Many of the people in the neighborhoods he studies aren't as fortunate.
"We have the means and the resources to go buy a bedroom portable window unit," he says. "I have privilege. I have transportation. But other people don't have that coping capacity." That deficiency is increasingly likely to worsen their overall health and even put some lives at risk.
A combination of factors – most principally, the increasing effects of climate change, the lingering effects of racist housing policies and seemingly intractable racial and economic inequality – make heat islands a potentially dangerous phenomenon.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 618 people in the U.S. die from extreme heat each year; young children, people 65 and older, and those with chronic health conditions like obesity and heart disease are among those at higher risk. Heat can lead to issues like the heart stressing to pump more blood, and people may be on medication that can exacerbate heat's effects.
From the Living Architecture Monitor
