Action4Canada - November 27, 2021


BC Doctor Diagnoses Climate Change

Hosted by
Tanya Gaw
Mentioned
Ted Chenech Okanagan Nelson
Empower Hour Q&A with Tanya Gaw & David Lindsay Nov-24-2021 Empower Hour with Tanya Gaw & Linda Morken Dec-01-2021

Episode Stats


Length

2 minutes

Words per minute

155.62

Word count

407

Sentence count

21


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Nearly 1,000 people died in British Columbia last summer because of the extreme heat and smoke from the fires. Experts say climate change is to blame, and the government should do more to prepare for it. Ted Chenech talks to a doctor in the Kootenays and an expert on air pollution about the problem.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 This isn't the Kootenays a family doctor remembers as a boy.
00:00:06.800 I grew up in this area and I don't remember problems with heat or wildfire smoke growing up at all.
00:00:13.100 Since I've been back for the past eight years in the Kootenays,
00:00:16.680 more often than not during the summer we're having a significant period of wildfire smoke
00:00:21.120 and then this past summer with the heat dome.
00:00:23.880 He and many of his colleagues in Nelson and elsewhere in the province
00:00:27.100 have taken to adding the words climate change when filling out medical reports.
00:00:31.840 No one can say for sure, but logic dictates that some of the patients they're seeing
00:00:35.820 shouldn't have symptoms so severe if it wasn't for heat and smoke,
00:00:40.460 and especially if it doesn't cool off at night, which it didn't this past summer.
00:00:44.320 You know, you get dehydrated. That makes it harder to manage your blood sugars.
00:00:47.380 Then your diabetes can go into whack, which makes it even harder and even more likely to get dehydrated,
00:00:51.740 and then you show up in an emergency department.
00:00:53.100 This map from Health Canada shows the premature deaths per 100,000 for those exposed to certain air pollutants.
00:01:00.480 Worst in the country is B.C. Southern Interior,
00:01:03.120 and five of the top 15 regions in Canada are in B.C.,
00:01:06.700 with the Okanagan Simokamine easily topping that list.
00:01:10.360 An expert on air pollution believes our health care system needs to be better prepared for not if, but when.
00:01:16.420 It's pretty well understood that this is something we should anticipate,
00:01:20.780 and it's almost like we'll be lucky if next summer we don't have something like this.
00:01:26.160 He runs UBC's air pollution exposure lab, aimed at collecting the science needed to know what air pollutants,
00:01:31.940 be it diesel fumes or smoke particulates, are doing to the human body.
00:01:36.220 In some cases, reducing pollution levels can solve a lot of problems,
00:01:39.680 but that's never going to happen with wildfires.
00:01:41.940 People that can't afford air conditioners, et cetera, that don't have them,
00:01:46.120 they really should be supported by the government,
00:01:47.720 because otherwise we're just letting everyone down.
00:01:49.860 And we're not talking about minor issues.
00:01:51.960 We're talking about deaths, nearly 1,000 last summer from heat alone.
00:01:55.700 So for the beleaguered taxpayer, subsidizing an air purifier or an air conditioner
00:02:00.280 for those who can't afford it might be far cheaper than even a short stay in a hospital.
00:02:05.860 Ted Chenech, Global News.
00:02:06.940 We'll be right back.