By 1 p.m., it was 95 degrees in Norwalk on what would turn out to be the last day of the third mini-heat wave of this summer.
Or maybe it was the fourth.
It was hot, again. The humidity was off the charts, again. And the air quality was lousy, again.
This was not just summer in New England. Such conditions are some of the irrefutable signatures of climate change, now happening more often, more intensely and with more profound consequences. Among those consequences is their adverse, and sometimes deadly, effect on human health.
Curiously, health tends to get second-class consideration among the many ways climate change affects our lives — after the storms, floods, drought and other more instantly catastrophic and obvious events. But climate change-induced health impacts are gaining traction as a primary concern — heat chief among them, but so are air quality, water quality, disease-carrying insects and secondary impacts such as mold, loss of electricity from catastrophic events and the mental health toll from each of the above.
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Environmental professionals traditionally haven’t been trained in health, so they don’t think of it. Health professionals aren’t trained in climate change. Laura Bozzi, Yale School of Public Health
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“Environmental professional …