Nurses Warm to Campaign Against Climate Change

Public Health Practitioners See Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions as Good Preventive Medicine

Even nurses are starting to catch global warming fever.

Spurred by what they see as an increasing number of illnesses, injuries and deaths related to global warming, a growing number of public health professionals are campaigning for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. They think of it as a form of preventive medicine: Stop carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, they say, and the risk of severe heat waves and tropical storms will diminish.

"There's only so much that the public health infrastructure can do to mediate a response to heat events," said Brenda Afzal, a nurse and director of health programs at the University of Maryland School of Nursing's Environmental Health Education Center. "For me as a public health practitioner, it's becoming increasingly apparent that public health folks need to be working on global warming issues."

Afzal was among a number of speakers during a recent news conference at which Environment Maryland, an advocacy group, discussed a report stating that the average temperature in Baltimore was 3 degrees above normal last year. Although that might not seem surprising, it lines up with scientists' predictions, said Brad Heavner, the state director of Environment Maryland.

"You have to start worrying that their future predictions are right, as well," he said. "If we don't get to work right away, we're going to see a lot of 100-degree days and a lot of wacky weather."

Afzal said she was able to round up about 20 nurses to attend the conference on only a few hours' notice. Nurses, she said, are starting to see the fight against global warming as part of their job.

"Nurses are becoming engaged and involved and concerned," she said. "It's a big thing to ask, but nurses are getting it."

Kristen Welker-Hood, a senior policy fellow for the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the American Nurses Association, also sees global warming as one of the key topics confronting nurses. Her organization wants to help reduce global climate change, and Welker-Hood is developing a Web site for members to educate themselves on the issue. She also encourages members and hospitals to conserve energy.

"We are the ones who are taking care of people who have these kind of diseases that are being exacerbated or even receiving injuries directly from climate change," she said.

The American Medical Association recently passed a resolution to explore climate change but has taken no definitive stance on the issue.

Welker-Hood and Afzal point to Europe's 2003 heat wave and to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 as prime evidence that global warming is a problem that should be of concern to nurses. Nurses simply cannot respond to such large-scale disasters adequately, they said, so a different solution needs to be explored -- a solution that addresses global warming.

Some people have expressed caution about the rush to calm global warming.

James M. Taylor, a senior fellow of environment policy for the Heartland Institute, a policy organization, said the link between major disasters and climate change is tenuous. He said some research indicates that higher temperatures reduce the number of hurricanes.

"At best, you have a mixed picture," he said. "When they tell us there's no link, I'd hesitate to rush into doing all sorts of things that will disrupt our economy and disrupt our society to address a problem that may not even exist."

On a more local level, global warming is contributing to excessively hot summers, which lead to more heat-related deaths and emergency room visits, Afzal said.

The summers of 2002, 2005 and 2006 saw 50, 47 and 42 heat-related deaths, respectively, in Maryland, according to data from the state Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In 2001, 2003 and 2004, there were 11, 3 and 5 heat-related deaths. This year, 13 people have died of heat-related illnesses.

Nurses and other scientists argue that Taylor is in the minority. The overwhelming majority of scientists think that human activity is causing climate change, said Daniel Kirk-Davidoff, an assistant professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland. He said climate change could have a particularly dire effect on a coastal state such as Maryland, which could be hurt by rising water levels.

"What makes Maryland special is just that we have a lot of seacoast," he said. "It's true, it's a long time off, but this is when we have to think about it, because if we don't think about it until then, it's too late."