It is one of the signs of the times, that a doctor has now diagnosed a patient’s asthma as due to climate change. I suppose given the vast academic literature about the supposed health effects of climate change, this was a slow train coming. But, soon it will be a very fast train.
“A Canadian doctor pointed to 'climate change’ as the cause for a patient's asthma after finding that an unprecedented heat wave and poor air quality contributed to the person's deteriorating health.
Dr. Kyle Merritt, who works at a Nelson, British Columbia hospital, said the environmental hazards prompted him to make his first ‘climate change’ clinical diagnosis after treating the patient who came in struggling to breathe.
'If we're not looking at the underlying cause, and we're just treating the symptoms, we're just gonna keep falling further and further behind,' the emergency room doctor told Glacier Media.
‘It's me trying to just... process what I'm seeing.’
The diagnosis came shortly after a historic heat wave in June killed nearly 500 Canadians during a five-day period as temperatures surged past 121F.
When the heat wave passed, it was replaced by another health threat as thick smoke from wildfires compromised air quality.
‘We're in the emergency department, we look after everybody, from the most privileged to the most vulnerable, from cradle to grave, we see everybody. And it's hard to see people, especially the most vulnerable people in our society, being affected. It's frustrating,’ he said.
Merritt also spoke about a patient in her 70s whose ailments were exacerbated during the heat wave.
‘She has diabetes. She has some heart failure. … She lives in a trailer, no air conditioning,’ he told the outlet. ‘All of her health problems have all been worsened. And she's really struggling to stay hydrated.’
The observations made by Merritt and other doctors throughout the western Canadian province promoted the colleagues to launch Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health.
The healthcare professionals are using the group to advocate for better health by protecting the environment, they said on the website.
‘We are deeply concerned about the climate crisis and its impact on health,’ the group’s website says. ‘This summer, our patients experienced extreme weather events of heat dome, drought, and severe wildfires. Record-breaking temperatures soared above 40 degrees Celsius in June and air pollution from wildfires reached 43 times the amount of safe levels throughout July and August.”