The everyday risks of climate change
After more than a week of being holed up inside due to the toxic haze that had settled over the Bay Area, after I’d sealed my windows with blue painter’s tape, ran an air purifier in the bedroom and put on an N95 mask anytime I stepped outside, I felt trapped, with a disturbing cough deep in my chest.
I sent a desperate email to a friend who lives in Beijing with her two children: Do you have any tips for getting through this?
We had a long Skype call, in which she showed me a glimpse of her world: specialized masks with a changeable filter and silicone seals that give her and her children the look of fighter pilots. Air purifiers that run at all times, which she cranks up depending on the reading on the indoor air monitor.
During periods of bad outdoor air quality, they go from bubble to bubble of clean air, to other similarly outfitted apartments. They have the routine down: Before heading out, her children know to check the monitor to see if they need their masks that day.
They had the means to equip themselves and their home, to take necessary precautions, and the mind-set that comes along with it. No different, say, than the hand-cranked radio, canned goods and gallons of water we in the Bay Area are supposed to have on hand in case of an earthquake, or the preparations people elsewhere take when preparing for a blizzard, stocking up on supplies, or a hurricane, like installing storm shutters.
These are the risks we weigh, and the safety measures we take, to remain where we are. On the outside looking in, some may take the attitude, “I couldn’t live like that.” And yet, don’t we have to admit that our options are closing, due to climate change?
Those without enough financial resources never had a choice.
A new government report released late last week had dire news about climate change, putting many at greater risk for illness and death in part because of higher temperatures in summer and wildfires ripping through six times more forest in areas of the United States — unless we immediately reduce fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions.
All of which seems unlikely under this president’s administration.
The catastrophe of the Camp Fire, and the choking smog that followed was all the more devastating because of the collective sense that such disasters are becoming habitual. Just as I remembered the drought years from my childhood in the late 1980s, so too my children will remember wildfires and smoke days that kept them home from school.
The rain that swept through and washed the air clean was a blessing, but a seemingly fragile and temporary one. Will we don our N95 masks around this time next year, or even sooner?
In January 2013, air pollution soared in Beijing, with readings of the dangerous fine particulate matter that can penetrate the lungs reaching 993 micrograms per cubic meter. By comparison, at the worst of it, San Francisco registered 221.1 on this pollution metric.
In China, the deadly smog, which became known as “airpocalypse,” sent many to the hospital for respiratory ailments. At the time, Henry Sung was visiting his grandmother. Not long after, she suffered a stroke and later a heart attack, which he says her doctor attributed to the dismal air quality. According to the American Heart Association, studies have shown that the exposure to air pollution contributes to cardiovascular issues and mortality in susceptible people, such as the elderly or those with pre-existing medical conditions.
In response, the Beijing-born Sung, who grew up in Los Gatos, invented idMask, an antipollution respirator that he began selling in 2014. (In recent years, air quality has improved in the capital, in part because of government campaigns to shut down or curtail factory production and local restrictions on traffic and construction on occasion.) His grandmother, who has since recovered, has installed an air purifier in every room and wears her mask when the air quality worsens.
At his Shanghai startup, Sung monitors global hot spots for air pollution on a daily basis. When I spoke to him this week, he was on his way to Luxembourg, for a project that will launch a satellite to monitor air pollution via different types of optical technologies.
“Early on, the thought of making money off a tragedy made me uncomfortable,” Sung said. “But one of my mentors told me, ‘Do doctors get upset because patients are sick?’ I’ve said to my team, ‘If we go out of business because air pollution improves around the world, it’s the best way to go out of business.’ ”
I remembered the drought years from my childhood ... my children will remember wildfires and smoke days.