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1 in 4 Americans today breathes unhealthy air because of climate change. And it’s getting worse.
Much of the U.S. Northeast was smothered last summer by dense smoke from Canadian wildfires, leading to New York City’s worst air quality since the 1960s. Such episodes, once mostly isolated incidents, are increasingly common due to the impact of climate change, new research shows.
About 83 million Americans, or 1 in 4, are already exposed each year to air quality that is categorized as “unhealthy” by the Air Quality Index (AQI), a number that could grow to 125 million people within decades, according to First Street Foundation, which analyzes climate risks. The unhealthy AQI level, color-coded red, means that outdoor activities can result in lung impairment for some people, including respiratory ailments like chest pain and coughs.
The nation’s worsening air quality comes after decades of improvements thanks to regulations such as the 1970 Clean Air Act, which tightened federal rules on pollutants emitted by factories and automobiles. But the recent rise in poor air quality could be harder to battle because it’s linked to global warming, with higher temperatures and drought causing more smoke-spewing wildfires, First Street said.
“Additional heart attacks”
At the same time, the rise in poor air quality threatens to reverse the health benefits that followed stricter pollution regulations starting in the 1960s and to hurt the U.S. economy, said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications research at First Street.
“We’re essentially adding back additional premature deaths, adding back additional heart attacks,” Porter told CBS MoneyWatch. “We’re losing productivity in the economic markets by additionally losing outdoor job work days.”
Already, there’s some evidence that people are leaving parts of the country with lower air quality, contributing to what is effectively a redrawing of the nation’s map by wildfire, flood and other effects of climate change.
“We’ve seen very early statistical signals in our own analysis that people are moving away from the smoke that comes from wildfire,” Porter said. “The downstream effect of people moving away is that property values start to suffer because the area becomes less desirable. And then as the area becomes less desirable, tax revenues are directly impacted because the property values are decreasing.”
Residents of California, Oregon and Washington state are seeing the greatest decline in air quality, partially due to wildfires in those regions. In California, air quality today is often in the “purple” and “maroon” levels — considered very healthy to hazardous — something that was unheard of about 15 years ago, First Street’s analysis found. At the same time, the number of “green” days, considered healthy, have decreased by a third since 2010.
Yet the impact isn’t only being felt on the West Coast, First Street found.
“It’s become something that is impacting people’s daily lives east of the Mississippi River,” Porter noted. In 2022, fires in the Florida panhandle were “so bad that people were asked to evacuate from their neighborhoods, which is kind of unheard of.”
The number of unhealthy AQI days is likely to grow in the coming decades due to climate change, First Street projected. Worst hit could be the Western states, but Eastern states aren’t immune. Pockets of the Southwest, especially on the Florida-Georgia borer, are already seeing an increase in the number of days with unhealthy AQI numbers.
Particulate matter and ozone
Poor air quality is linked to increases in particulate matter and ozone, which are rising due to changes in the environment including extreme heat, drought and wildfires. Particulate matter that’s less than 2.5 microns in diameter, also called PM2.5, is particularly concerning because these tiny flecks of pollution can get deep into your lungs, causing a range of health problems.
PM2.5 particulates are increasing because of wildfires, while 2022 research found that ground-level ozone is also being exacerbated by the increasingly devastating blazes. Ozone levels can inflame your airways and raise the risks of an asthma attack, among other health problems, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Although reversing the amount air pollution linked to climate change is difficult, at least knowing the risks and how to mitigate them can help, Porter said. First Street has a site called RiskFactor.com where you can enter your address and see your risks for flooding, fire, wind and heat.
Individuals may also need to take steps to protect their own health in the face of more poor air quality days, he added.
“Being able to keep smoke out of your house is really important,” Porter said. “Things like making sure your windows are sealed, and something as simple as changing the filter on your HVAC can make a big, big impact on how clean the air is inside your house.”
This year’s resurgence of whooping cough cases has now accelerated to the fastest pace on record in nearly a decade, according to figures published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as pertussis infections are now again climbing around the country during the back-to-school season.
A total of 291 cases were reported for the week ending on Sept. 14, the CDC says. New York has reported the most cases this week of any state, with 44 infections. Ohio, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma have also reported at least 38 cases each.
This now marks the most infections of the bacteria Bordatella pertussis reported to the CDC in a single week since 2015, when the country was coming off a resurgence of whooping cough cases that had peaked the year before.
Whooping cough disease, caused by the pertussis bacteria, typically starts around a week after people are first exposed to another contagious person. Symptoms can last for weeks to months, typically with the disease’s infamous “whooping” as patients struggle to breathe after facing a burst of coughs.
So far this year, 14,569 cases have been reported to the agency, more than four times higher than the number of infections reported by this time last year.
Cases are also higher than the more than 10,000 cases that were reported by this time in 2019, before COVID-19 pandemic measures also caused plummeting cases of pertussis and other infections that spread through the air.
The need for better whooping cough vaccines
While unvaccinated young children and newborns delivered by unvaccinated moms remain at the highest risk of infection and severe disease from whooping cough, federal health officials have warned for months that the U.S. was likely to see a resurgence of breakthrough infections in older children and adults.
Pertussis cases have largely grown over the past few decades, after the U.S. and other high-income countries switched to pertussis vaccines after the 1970s that triggered fewer side effects but also are less effective at guarding against disease and spread.
Officials in Pennsylvania, which has seen one of the country’s largest pertussis outbreaks this year, say that many outbreaks have been fueled by high school students.
“Cases and outbreaks have continued throughout the summer even though most schools were closed,” the department said in an alert to doctors in the state this month, urging doctors to prepare for the possibility of a “continued increase” as schools resumed.
In New York, 40% of their cases this year outside of New York City have been in teens ages 15 to 19 years old, according to figures the state’s health department shared with CBS News.
“[W]e are not seeing evidence of a specific cluster or location or event. Cases have been identified all over the state and among children and adolescents in various settings,” a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Health said.
In Oklahoma, which has seen one of the steepest increases in cases of any state over recent weeks, cases have been seen in people as old as 86 years old. The median age of cases is 9 years old, the health department said.
“Since Jan. 1, 2024, there have been 162 cases of whooping cough in Oklahoma, which is the highest number of cases since 2017 when 207 cases were reported,” Erica Rankin-Riley, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma State Department of Health, told CBS News.
Talks on new trials
The resurgence comes as the Food and Drug Administration is now weighing the prospect of human challenge trials – studies intentionally infecting vaccinated volunteers with the bacteria – in the hopes of accelerating the development of more effective shots to fend off the bacteria.
A panel of the FDA’s advisers are scheduled to meet Friday to discuss the trials, which could lead to vetting “new pertussis vaccines for booster vaccination of adults.”
The CDC currently recommends a number of pertussis shots for children and adults, including boosters of the Tdap vaccine – which contains antigens designed to protect against pertussis – for all adults every 10 years.
Around 39% of adults have gotten a pertussis booster in the last 10 years, CDC survey data from 2022 suggests.
Other factors may also be contributing to rising cases, the FDA said, like mutations in circulating pertussis strains and the “rapid waning” of immunity.
The current generation of “acellular pertussis” vaccines are still believed to “provide a significant public health benefit by preventing disease,” the FDA said in briefing documents published ahead of the meeting.
“Despite the resurgence of pertussis, current rates of disease are very low relative to the rates reported during the pre-vaccine era,” agency officials wrote.
Amazon sent shockwaves through its ranks — and corporate America — Monday when CEO Andrew Jassy told workers they will be expected to report to the office five days a week starting in January.
The decision represents one of the most stringent return to office policies from a major corporation since the pandemic, when offices were suddenly shuttered and many employees shifted to remote work. Amazon’s move is also unusual for a business in the tech industry, which has largely embraced remote and hybrid work arrangements.
Under the company’s current mandate, Amazon workers have been reporting to their physical offices three days a week, although that will expire by the beginning of next year. While advocates of in-office work argue that showing up in person helps foster collaboration and feelings of connectedness, skeptics say Amazon could be imposing the mandate to reduce headcount, as some employees may search for more flexible jobs and depart, without having to lay off workers.
For his part, Jassy said the move is designed to improve company culture. But Amazon workers are reportedly grousing on internal forums about the move.
Amazon isn’t alone in reining in remote work. Here are a few of the major employers that have summoned workers back to the office.
Amazon
CEO Andrew Jassy said the back-to-the-office decision is based on his observation that collaborating and brainstorming work better when people are together in the office.
To foster a culture of collaboration, “we’ve decided that we’re going to return to being in the office the way we were before the onset of COVID,” Jassy said in a memo to employees posted on Amazon’s website. “When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.”
Disney
Disney mandates that employees work in the office four days a week, typically Monday to Thursday.
“[I]n a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe and create with peers that comes from being physically together, nor the opportunity to grow professionally by learning from leaders and mentors,” CEO Bob Iger said in a 2023 memo to employees.
JPMorgan
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is a staunch advocate of in-person work, and once blasted remote work as a policy that “does not work for younger people. It doesn’t work for those who want to hustle,” he said at a business forum. He was among the first leaders to summon employees back to the workplace.
As of April 2023, workers have been reporting to JPMorgan offices at least three times a week. The company is reportedly tracking attendance, too.
Starbucks
While the coffee giant’s new CEO Brian Niccol will commute to Starbucks’ Seattle headquarters from his Newport Beach, California residence, most other workers likely live in closer proximity to their offices, given that they must be at their desks three days a week.
Niccol is not exempt from following the mandate, according to the company.
X
X owner Elon Musk has consistently opposed remote work, saying he believes workers are more productive when working from a corporate office.
In 2022, he said all X workers would be expected to report to the office on a full-time basis, and that he would interpret a failure to show up as a resignation from the company.
Zoom
Even pandemic icon Zoom, one of the companies that benefitted the most from remote work, last summer told workers who live near a company office to report to their desks at least two times a week, a company spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.
The mandate applies to its roughly 7,400 workers who live near a Zoom office, the videoconferencing platform said at the time.
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