Fevered Quotes

“The impact on our health barely rates any media coverage, even though that’s the part of a changing climate that will hit us the hardest in the near future. The United States has neglected to support research into the health consequences of climate change, according to a 2009 report”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Medical records at many hospitals had been kept in manila folders rather than electronically, so health care providers typically had little information about what medications displaced patients with life-threatening ailments like cancer or heart disease were taking,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“They gave me a stick and told me to hit people if they tried to get into the truck because they were so desperate to get out of there,” he recalled, still horrified at the memory. “I remember thinking, ‘I’m a doctor. I don’t hit people with sticks.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Earlier in the day, Coast Guard helicopters had arrived and volunteered to spend an hour transporting healthy people to safety (they didn’t have enough space for seriously ill patients on stretchers). “Part of the disaster was natural, but a big, big part of it was man-made and poor decision making,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“law enforcement officials continually rebuffed offers of help by private citizens with boats. “Nobody ever envisioned that the authorities would prevent people from coming in to rescue us,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“DeBlieux recalled. “And then they didn’t. We heard on the portable radio that we had already been evacuated. That was priceless.” In the storm’s chaotic aftermath, power lines fell, cell phone towers collapsed, and the communications infrastructure was decimated,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“For three days, Charity Hospital, one of the biggest facilities in the country, had somehow fallen off the government’s disaster management radar screen, and no help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) or the National Guard arrived. “On day three and day four, we were told, at least twice, ‘Pack your bags, they’re coming”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Kalkstein’s team also observed that people were more vulnerable to heatstroke in cities that aren’t accustomed to hotter weather, and that sharp spikes in temperature—a swing from, say, a tolerable 80°F to a run in the low 100s—can trigger more deaths.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“In Canada, there are fears they could wipe out the whole boreal forest,” said Wiedinmyer. “There would be no trees in Canada—one of our largest ecosystems and carbon sinks in the world—which would be really catastrophic. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Researchers looked at 15 states that had experienced significant tree loss due to the beetle infestation and concluded the borer was linked to more than 6,000 deaths from respiratory problems and 15,000 heart disease–related deaths.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“diesel exhaust emitted by factories and big rigs not only damages the lungs, but also makes an excellent transport system for fungal spores, which proliferate in hotter, carbon-enriched environments. They attach themselves like glue to the tiny diesel particles, which scatter them in the wind in a “nasty synergy,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“because pollutants released by cars in the morning are converted into ozone later in the day. What researchers discovered about daily shifts in air quality during the 17 days of the Games was remarkable: Even though it was humid and sticky and temperatures hovered in the mid-80s, ozone dropped by 27 percent”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“looked at hospital admission data from 12 major cities such as Dublin, London, Barcelona, Athens, and Rome from at least a three-year period. They found that for every 1°C (about 2°F) temperature increase, hospitalizations from respiratory- and asthma-related illnesses rose by 4.5 percent.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Research on air quality in New York City, Phoenix, and Baltimore shows that ambient CO2 parts per million (ppm) levels can spike into the 400s, 500s, and 600s—right now, the global average is 393 ppm—which climate modelers predict will become the norm in 20 to 30 years.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“In the years to come, we’re going to have major increases in all types of chronic illnesses,” he continued, ticking them off on his fingers: “in respiratory illnesses, in heart disease, in increases in heart attacks and strokes because air pollution increases blood clotting,”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“During one five-year period, from 1995 to 2000, the southern half of the valley region lost 3,000 people with bachelor’s degrees while adding 13,000 adults without high school diplomas, according to the Public Policy Institute of”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“within a quarter of a mile from a freeway had an 89 percent higher risk of asthma than kids more than a mile away; their asthma symptoms also were worse, and, even among those with health insurance, their odds of ending up in the hospital emergency room choking from the bad air was triple that of youngsters in more affluent areas.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“The lung development of children who lived near highly trafficked corridors was stunted—about 20 percent smaller than average—which greatly impaired their functioning. These youngsters also suffered from asthma at significantly higher rates—”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“scares—SARS, Hong Kong and avian flus, and Japanese encephalitis—originated in Asia, he noted. “If you look at global trends, almost all of the economic growth and all of the urban population growth in the next 20 years will occur in the countries and cities of Asia.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“and the Southwest bakes during increasingly severe and prolonged droughts, epidemics like cocoliztli will doubtless return. “Sooner or later, a new virus will emerge from animals, from the desert, for which we don’t have any vaccine [or] drugs,” said Acuña-Soto. “That’s guaranteed. That’s the big fear of science.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Much like the transmission pattern of the hantavirus, the rat population was depleted during the drought, when food was scarce. Once the rains returned, food and water were suddenly plentiful, so the number of infected rats exploded and the deadly scourge spread to humans.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“disease that was in Mexico during the 16th century,” Acuña-Soto said. “This sounded like a hemorrhagic fever. So if the Spanish didn’t bring about the fever, what did?” In his research, Acuña-Soto noticed a pattern: The plague appeared during a period of wet weather and heavy rainfall that followed years of severe drought.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“There were 400 dead crows that had been sitting in DEC’s refrigerators in Albany since June,” she recalled with no small measure of outrage, still shaken more than a decade later by what she viewed as bureaucratic incompetence bordering on criminal negligence. “Birds, dogs, cats, and other animals are urban disease sentinels.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“We need a 21st-century international public health movement. Unless this challenge finds its way to the top of the international public health agenda, this century could be a disaster movie without a happy ending.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences; in 2011, we spent a paltry $3 million to study this issue, a federal oversight that researchers warned “is needlessly putting multitudes at risk.” State governments, with a few notable exceptions, have done little to plan for the added burden on the health system.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“You go back to the 1890s—we go back 110 years because it is so easy to stress the system to the breaking point where we don’t have basic sanitation, uncontaminated food or water, or the ability to control communicable diseases.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“experts used to believe diseases were mostly transmitted by people or animals, many now maintain that airborne dust clouds can carry viruses like influenza or SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and other potentially harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungal spores over thousands of miles.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Scientists now know, too, that huge dust storms like the ones that recently blanketed Arizona, northern China, Australia, and other arid areas are also responsible for spreading lethal epidemics around the world.”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that, worldwide over the past three decades, 150,000 people a year have died as a result of a warming planet—mainly from increased mortality due to higher rates of malaria, diarrheal diseases, and floods—”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves

“Climate change is not just about melting icebergs, storm surges, floods, and droughts, according to Parenti. A warmer world will be more dangerous and unstable, and the damage caused by climbing temperatures will be a catalyst for escalating religious conflicts, civil wars, failed states, mass migrations, and border militarization”
― Linda Marsa, Fevered: Why a Hotter Planet Will Hurt Our Health -- and how we can save ourselves