Being vegetarian makes you less likely to develop cancer and heart disease, major study finds
Phoebe Southworth
vegetables – Enrique Díaz / 7cero /Moment RF
Being a vegetarian makes you less likely to develop cancer and heart disease, a major new study has found.
Scientists at the University of Glasgow analysed more than 177,000 adults in the UK to find out whether their dietary choice affected the level of disease markers in their bodies.
They looked at 19 health indicators, known as biomarkers, in their blood and urine related to cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and kidney function, as well as liver, bone and joint health.
The 4,000 vegetarians in the group had significantly lower levels of 13 biomarkers when compared with meat eaters, the scientists found.
These included low-density lipoprotein (so-called “bad cholesterol”); apolipoprotein A and B, which are linked to cardiovascular disease; and insulin-like growth factor, a hormone that encourages the growth and proliferation of cancer cells.
Even vegetarians who were obese, smokers or drinkers were found to have lower levels of these biomarkers, suggesting diet is an incredibly important influence on the risk of developing serious illnesses.
Dr Carlos Celis-Morales, who led the research, said: “Our findings offer real food for thought. As well as not eating red and processed meat which have been linked to heart diseases and some cancers, people who follow a vegetarian diet tend to consume more vegetables, fruits, and nuts which contain more nutrients, fibre, and other potentially beneficial compounds.
“These nutritional differences may help explain why vegetarians appear to have lower levels of disease biomarkers that can lead to cell damage and chronic disease.”
Biomarkers are widely used to assess the impact of diet on health.
The participants were aged between 37 and 73, and filled out questionnaires on what they ate. They had not radically altered their diet in the five years prior to the study.
However, the scientists noted that the biomarkers of participants were only tested once, rather than multiple times over a long period of time – so more extensive testing could yield different results.
Despite having lower levels of 13 biomarkers linked to disease, vegetarians were also found to have lower levels of some beneficial biomarkers.
These included high-density lipoprotein (so-called “good cholesterol), and vitamin D and calcium, which are linked to bone and joint health.
They also had a significantly higher level of fats (triglycerides) in the blood, as well as cystatin-C – suggesting a poorer kidney condition.
Scientists concluded in the study: “Vegetarians have a more favourable biomarkers profile than meat-eaters. These associations were independent of sociodemographics and lifestyle-related confounding factors.”
The findings will be presented to the European Congress on Obesity this week.
Delta variant: Doctor cautions Americans about traveling to Florida
Seana Smith, Anchor July 21, 2021
As the highly transmissible Delta variant spreads nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the State Department are urging Americans to avoid traveling to the UK.
But that’s not going far enough, U.S., Dr. Ebony Jade Hilton, GoodStock Consulting co-founder and medical director, told Yahoo Finance Live. In fact, Americans should be careful traveling to certain areas within the U.S.
“If we’re going to talk about traveling to the U.K., then we should also caution Americans about traveling to Florida,” Hilton said. “Right now, one in every five new COVID cases are coming out of Florida.”
In Florida, only 47% of the population is fully vaccinated as the state is seeing an average of 55.1 daily new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, the highest rate in the country, according to data from the Brown School of Public Health. And according to the Florida Department of Health’s weekly COVID-19 report, the number of new COVID-19 cases nearly doubled in the state last week from the prior week.
‘The Delta variant is a game changer’
During a press briefing on Friday, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients said four states accounted for more than 40% of all cases in the past week, with 20% of new cases occurring in Florida alone.
Arkansas is also among the nation’s current pandemic hot spots. Brown School of Public Health data shows the state is reporting an average of 38.1 daily new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people, and is designated “red” on the risk-assessment map.
“We’re seeing an uptick across the Southeast, and even to the Midwest,” Hilton said. “We’re looking at places like Alabama and Arkansas. So we can talk about the rest of the world, but the United States really needs to hone in and focus on what is preventing us from having a successful vaccine rollout in those heavily hit areas.”
The CDC is urging caution about traveling to Florida amid the spread of the Delta variant. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Vaccinations are the key to slowing the spread of the Delta variant. In Alabama, where only about 33% of the population is fully vaccinated, the state department reported a 39% jump in COVID-19 cases from June 26 to July 9, and unvaccinated people represented 96% of COVID-19 deaths in the state since April 1.
Nationwide, Johns Hopkins University data shows a total of 243,110 new cases were reported last week as the Delta variant spreads, accounting for about 40% of the total cases in the past month.
“The Delta variant is a game changer,” Hilton said. “New cases nationwide are up 140% in the last two weeks. Our hospitalizations are up 34%, and our deaths, unfortunately, are increasing by 33%. We’re not finished with this pandemic.”
The largest wildfire in the U.S. advances toward Oregon mountain towns
Molly Hennessy-Fisk
Flames and smoke rise from the Bootleg fire in southern Oregon last week. The wildfire was burning northeast of the blaze that ravaged the Klamath Tribes’ community less than a year ago. (John Hendricks / Oregon Office of the State Fire Marshal)
In 20 years of Oregon firefighting, Wayne Morris has never seen anything like the Bootleg fire.
Fire commanders had planned to flank the blaze that erupted about 300 miles southeast of Portland around the Fremont-Winema National Forest on July 6. But the fire proved too fast and intense, scorching more than 388,000 acres of southern Oregon forest — half the area of Rhode Island — destroying at least 70 homes and forcing thousands to evacuate. No injuries or deaths had been reported as of Tuesday afternoon.
The fire was only 30% contained Tuesday and continued to advance toward mountain towns, even as 2,250 firefighters and others fought it. The blaze absorbed a smaller one this week to become the largest wildfire now burning in the U.S., and fourth-largest in state history — so big that it has created its own lightning.
“We’re seeing things we’ve never seen before as far as size and activity,” Morris said as his crew walked the fire line, extinguishing flames.
Firefighters came to help from as far away as Florida and Kentucky, along with many from California. At a fire base in the tiny community of Bly, firetrucks were on hand from Fremont, Rancho Cucamonga and San Bruno.
Firefighters were sooty and exhausted after days of being forced to retreat as the blaze leaped over fire lines.
Anaheim Fire Capt. Aaron Mooney arrived with his crew 10 days ago, and knows others in the area from Fullerton, Laguna Beach, Long Beach and Orange.
It was Mooney’s first time fighting fires in Oregon, but he said the Bootleg fire reminded him of those he had fought in recent years in Northern California. It was a timber-fueled fire as opposed to the wind-driven fires common in Southern California. He pointed to the towering pines that surrounded him, many of their trunks charred.
“It’s the timber litter — the ‘down and dead’ fuels, what falls out of the trees naturally,” Mooney said. He noted that it had been so unseasonably hot and dry in recent days that there was more than a 90% probability that new fires would be sparked.
On Tuesday, temperatures dipped, with clouds and even some spotty rain that helped firefighters tamp down lingering fires on the southern flank.
“We’re hoping to hold this line,” Mooney said as his team refueled a water truck.
The incident commander for the south side of the fire, Joe Hessel of the Oregon Department of Forestry, said Tuesday that he expected firefighters to gain control of the Bootleg fire’s southern flank within 48 hours.
Pointing to a map in his command post, set up at Lakeview High School on the fire’s southeast edge, Hessel traced the fire’s latest path northeast toward the rural communities of Paisley, Summer Lake and Silver Lake. Some residents who grew up around smaller wildfires had refused to evacuate, he said.
“They’ve lived with fire their whole lives,” he said. “But we’re not used to having million-acre fires” — which the Bootleg fire was shaping up to be.
The largest forest fire in Oregon’s recent history was the Biscuit fire, which burned nearly 780 square miles in 2002 in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon and Northern California. Oregon’s megafires usually start after spring rains, and can burn until early winter. This year they started early, in March, before things had greened up, which firefighters said added to the fires’ strength.
On the Bootleg fire map, Hessel traced the western edge of Summer Lake’s basin, known as Winter Rim or Winter Ridge.
“If it goes over that rim, it’s going to get really challenging,” he said.
Hessel knows because he fought a fire in the area — the Winter Rim fire — in 2002, and remembers how it sucked hot air into the basin. That fire burned about 31,000 acres. The Bootleg fire was burning about as many acres each day.
In 38 years of firefighting, Hessel said, “I’ve never experienced that continuous, day after day fire behavior and growth.”
His counterpart to the north, Incident Cmdr. Rob Allen, was trying to stop the fire from reaching the lake’s rim Tuesday, sending helicopters to drop water and fire retardant, as firefighters on foot chopped logs and other brush that could feed the flames.
“Fighting this fire is a marathon, not a sprint,” Allen said. “We’re in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster.”
Western wildfire smoke creates fiery sunrise 2,000 miles away in New York City
By Jeremy Lewan and Kathryn Prociv July 20, 2021
Wildfires rage across 13 states as smoke swirls across the country creating hazy skies along the Eastern Seaboard from Toronto to Washington, D.C.
The sun rises above the CN Tower through a thick haze caused by smoke from forest fires burning in western Canada moving through the upper atmosphere July 19, 2021, in Toronto.Gary Hershorn / Getty Images
After baking in weeks of searing heat, the West is erupting in fierce wildfires so strong the smoke was visible Tuesday on the East Coast in cities such as New York and Washington, D.C.
Air quality alerts were issued for New York City on Tuesday, and the National Weather Service urged sensitive groups to remain indoors.
More than 75 wildfires have already scorched more than 1 million acres in 13 states. On Tuesday, 3 million people remained under red flag warnings blanketing eight states across the Northwest and the northern Plains, including the area of the Bootleg Fire in Oregon, currently the largest fire this year.
Now classified as a megafire,or a fire burning more than 100,000 acres, the Bootleg Fire has blazed over 350,000 acres, which is about half the size of Rhode Island, and was only 30 percent contained as of Tuesday.
Conditions surrounding the area have exhibited extreme fire behavior, and the massive inferno has been so powerful that it created its own weather, generating dangerous columns of lightning-charged smoke and ash, called pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus clouds, reaching the stratosphere. These can reach more than 40,000 feet into the atmosphere – the altitude at which commercial airplanes fly.
The Beckwourth Complex Fire, raging in Northern California, has topped 100,000 acres burned, also earning the megafire title. With more than 1,000 firefighters working, the fire was nearly 90 percent contained Tuesday.
Pacific Gas and Electric, California’s largest utility, may be responsible for another blaze licking across Northern California. On Sunday, a spokesperson admitted that blown fuses on one of its utility poles may have sparked the over the Dixie Fire, which is 30,000 acres and growing. This comes after PG&E has taken responsibility for the devastating 2018 Camp Fire and the 2019 Kincade Fire that burned more than 100 square miles of Sonoma County.
According to an update Monday from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CAL FIRE, compared to this same time last year, there are over 900 more fires and 165,000 additional acres burned. For context, 2020 was the worst Western fire season in history.
The situation has become so dire that the National Interagency Fire Center has upgraded the national preparedness level to the highest category, Level 5, signifying that at least 80 percent of wildland firefighters are currently responding to fires.
Wildfire growth and spread are expected to intensify through the week as yet another major heat wave roasted the high Plains and the Rocky Mountains, peaking Monday. Triple-digit temperatures, combined with humidity as low as 10 percent and wind gusts up to 40 mph, will produce ideal wildfire conditions. An additional major concern is the dry thunderstorms expected to flare along the interior Northwest, producing abundant lightning that could easily spark sun-baked vegetation.
Minnesota has always been blessed with an abundance of water, above ground and below.
But the drought shows how quickly something usually taken for granted can become a concern.
While the immediate Mankato area has been blessed with a few timely rains that have helped crops and lawns, the signs of this year’s precipitation shortage — 11 inches below normal — is visible. Rivers are extremely low and showing sandbars not seen in many years. Boaters at area lakes are finding public boat ramps more difficult or impossible to use because of falling lake levels.
Around much of the state, including the Twin Cities, restrictions on watering lawns are in effect or soon will be as concerns about falling well and aquifer levels increase.
The conditions show just how fast our life-giving water can be jeopardized. While not yet an emergency here, the searing droughts and growing water shortages in the western United States portend serious problems far into the future.
Already some water-thirsty states have proposed piping water from Minnesota’s aquifers or from the Great Lakes. Fortunately, those efforts have so far been thwarted as Minnesotans and neighboring states have refused to make our waters a commodity.
And while southern Minnesota continues to have a good underground water supply, much of central and northern Minnesota has seen too much demand, such as for irrigating potato fields.
Above ground, our lakes and rivers aren’t only falling but many are impaired. The MPCA lists 56% of lakes and rivers as impaired.
Whether the current drought pattern is contributed to or caused by climate change isn’t something anyone can answer. We’ve had severe droughts in Minnesota long ago and will again.
But what is certain is that climate change will make for more erratic weather, and demands on our water resources will continue to grow — be it from more droughts, local demand or from other states seeking new water sources.
Next time you turn on the garden hose or visit a lake or river, it’s worth considering the value of our rich resources.
Water is a public good that needs to be protected from pollutants and overuse.
‘It Is All Connected’: Extreme Weather in the Age of Climate Change
Henry Fountain and John Schwartz
Soldiers of the German armed forces Bundeswehr search for flood victims in submerged vehicles on the federal highway B265 in Erftstadt, western Germany, on July 17, 2021, after heavy rains hit parts of the country, causing widespread flooding and major damage. – Rescue workers scrambled on July 17 to find survivors and victims of the devastation wreaked by the worst floods to hit western Europe in living memory, which have already left more than 150 people dead and dozens more missing. (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON / AFP) (Photo by SEBASTIEN BOZON/AFP via Getty Images)
The images from Germany are startling and horrifying: houses, shops and streets in the picturesque cities and villages along the Ahr and other rivers violently washed away by fast-moving floodwaters.
The flooding was caused by a storm that slowed to a crawl over parts of Europe on Wednesday, dumping as much as 6 inches of rain on the region near Cologne and Bonn before finally beginning to let up Friday. There was flooding in Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, too, but the worst impacts were in Germany, where the official death toll passed 125 on Friday and was sure to climb.
The storm was a frightening example of an extreme weather event, with some places getting a month’s worth of rain in a day. But in an era of climate change, extreme weather events are becoming more common.
The question is, how much did climate change affect this specific storm and the resulting floods?
A complete answer will have to await analyses, almost certain to be undertaken given the magnitude of the disaster, that will seek to learn if climate change made this storm more likely, and if so, by how much.
But for many scientists the trend is clear. “The answer is yes — all major weather these days is being affected by the changes in climate,” said Donald J. Wuebbles, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois.
Already studies have shown an increase in extreme downpours as the world warms, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations-backed group that reports on the science and impacts of global warming, has said that the frequency of these events will increase as temperatures continue to rise.
Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, a researcher with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, said that in studies of extreme rain events in the Netherlands, “the observed increase is stronger than we expected.”
Van Oldenborgh is one of the primary scientists with World Weather Attribution, a loose-knit group that quickly analyzes specific extreme weather events with regard to any climate-change impact. He said the group, which just finished a rapid analysis of the heat wave that struck the Pacific Northwest in late June, was discussing whether they would study the German floods.
One reason for stronger downpours has to do with basic physics: warmer air holds more moisture, making it more likely that a specific storm will produce more precipitation. The world has warmed by a little more than 1 degree Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 19th century, when societies began pumping huge amounts of heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere.
For every 1 Celsius degree of warming, air can hold 7% more moisture. As a result, said Hayley Fowler, a professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University in England, “These kinds of storm events will increase in intensity.”
And although it is still a subject of debate, there are studies that suggest rapid warming in the Arctic is affecting the jet stream, by reducing the temperature difference between northern and southern parts of the Northern Hemisphere. One effect in summer and fall, Fowler said, is that the high-altitude, globe-circling air current is weakening and slowing down.
“That means the storms have to move more slowly,” Fowler said. The storm that caused the recent flooding was practically stationary, she noted. The combination of more moisture and a stalled storm system can lead to extra-heavy rains over a given area.
Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist with the Earth Institute of Columbia University, said that his and his colleagues’ research, and papers from other scientists, drew similar conclusions about slowing weather systems. “They all point in the same direction — that the summertime mid-latitude circulation, the jet stream, is slowing down and constitutes a more persistent weather pattern” that means extreme events like heat waves and pounding rains are likely to go on and on.
Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University, has studied the effects of a different summertime jet stream phenomenon known as “wave resonance” in locking weather systems in place.
Climate change, he said, is making the stalling weather events more frequent. But he said it was premature to say that the European disaster was caused by wave resonance.
Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist with the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts, said that while dawdling weather systems can have many causes, they generally don’t occur in a vacuum.
The European storm is “part of this bigger picture of extremes we’ve been seeing all along the Northern Hemisphere this summer,” she said, include the heat in the American West and Pacific Northwest, intense rainfall and cooler temperatures in the Midwest, and heat waves in Scandinavia and Siberia.
“It’s never in isolation when it comes to an odd configuration of the jet stream,” Francis said. “One extreme in one place is always accompanied by extremes of different types.”
“It is all connected, and it’s all the same story, really,” she added.
When it comes to floods, however, there are other factors that can come into play and complicate any analysis of the influence of climate change.
For one thing, local topography has to be taken into account, as that can affect rainfall patterns and how much runoff gets into which rivers.
Human impacts can complicate an analysis even further. Development near rivers, for instance, often replaces open land, which can absorb rain, with buildings, streets and parking lots that increase the amount of water that drains into rivers. Infrastructure built to cope with heavy runoff and rising rivers may be under-designed and inadequate.
And meteorological conditions can sometimes lead to different conclusions.
A 2016 study by World Weather Attribution of flooding in France and Germany in May of that year found that climate change affected the French flooding, which was caused by three days of rain. But the situation in Germany was different; the flooding was caused by a one-day storm. The computer simulations did not find that the likelihood of shorter storms in that area had increased in a changing climate.
While some development can make flooding worse, other projects can reduce flooding. That appears to have been the case in the Netherlands, which was not as severely affected by the storm.
After several major floods on the Meuse River in the 1990s, the Dutch government began a program called Room for the River to reduce flooding, said Nathalie Asselman, who advises the government and other clients on flood risk.
The work involved lowering and widening river beds, lowering flood plains and excavating side channels. “The aim of these measures is to lower flood levels,” she said.
While a dike near the Meuse in southern Netherlands suffered a breach that caused some flooding until it was repaired on Friday, the measures appear to have worked.
Flood levels on the Meuse were about a foot lower than would have been the case without them, Asselman said. That meant smaller tributaries backed up less where they met the Meuse, producing less flooding.
“If we wouldn’t have implemented these measures, then the situation would have been worse,” she said. “Both on the main river and the tributaries.”
Conservation isn’t enough. Booming Fort Worth area needs new lake as a water source
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board
No one builds a lake on a lark.
It takes decades of discussion and planning to designate a reservoir site, conduct extensive environmental reviews and acquire permits and property. Along the way, stakeholders at every level have ample opportunity to weigh in.
That process has been playing out for nearly 25 years when it comes to the proposed Marvin Nichols Reservoir. It’s a key part of the future for much of the Dallas-Fort Worth region, including Tarrant County. So, its inclusion in the latest version of the state’s master water-supply and regulation plan is good news.
Landowners in northeast Texas, the proposed site of the lake, and some environmentalists are reinforcing their opposition to the new reservoir, which still wouldn’t be built yet for decades. There’s no question its creation will be a hardship for many, and property rights deserve the utmost respect and defense.
But it’s in the best interest of the region and state to build Marvin Nichols, and it’s not a close call. The process must move forward.
Dan Buhman, general manager of the Tarrant Regional Water District, which ensures a safe and reliable water supply for the area, said that the agency always seeks first to maximize conservation, reuse water and seek other efficiencies. But the need for a new source in the coming decades is inevitable.
“We have to meet the demands of a growing region,” Buhman said. “Marvin Nichols has got to be part of our portfolio of our possible water supplies. But it’s not our only option. The first priority is always efficiency.”
Dallas-Fort Worth remains primed for huge population growth for decades. That’s a good thing: It means vitality and more opportunity for all. But growth brings challenges, including the need to secure resources and infrastructure for households and businesses alike.
There was a time when conservation efforts were insufficient. But the entire area has made tremendous strides. Per-capita water usage rates in area cities has dropped over the years. Fort Worth and Arlington receive some of the highest scores on conservation from Texas Living Waters, a coalition of advocacy groups seeking to protect freshwater sources.
Buhman said the water district’s service area conserves 20 billion gallons annually, a testament to better technology, more efficient use of resources and a constant reinforcing of the message that saving water is important.
And such efforts should continue. Buhman noted that many new arrivals to Tarrant County come from places where water is abundant, so ongoing education about the challenges of ensuring our water supply is important.
“We have to do everything we can do to use the resources we have responsibly,” said Buhman, who recently ascended to the district’s top job. But “based on all our studies, conservation is insufficient to deal with our growth.”
Even with robust conservation and reuse, the North Texas region (as defined for state water planning purposes) will see its demand increase 67 percent over the coming decades, the Texas plan notes. Where will it come from? The Tarrant district once tried to get more from across the Red River, but it lost a dispute with Oklahoma at the Supreme Court. We simply must have other options to supply and store water. Buhman noted that one of the predicted effects of climate change for the region is fewer rainfall events that are more intense. Capturing that water when it comes is important.
That’s where Marvin Nichols comes in. The state doesn’t build reservoirs on a whim. A new one hasn’t opened in decades, and the last lake built in the DFW area, Joe Pool, is more than three decades old.
Opponents to Marvin Nichols seem reinvigorated by the North Texas region’s push to include the reservoir in the long-term plan. It’s uniting property owners, environmentalists and timber interests. Federal review will take many more years, and they’ll have ample opportunity to weigh in.
No one should pretend that building Marvin Nichols comes without cost. But tradeoffs are necessary. For a glimpse of what can happen when the right decisions aren’t made decades in advance, look no further than California, where a failure of planning and worsening drought have much of the state on the precipice of a water crisis.
Elected and appointed officials alike must stay well ahead of the curve. That kind of prudence, temperament and vision necessary are a reason to pay close attention when offices such as the water district’s board of directors are on the ballot.
After all, as Buhman says, no one wants the day to come when we turn the tap and wonder what, if anything, will come out.
‘We are so unprepared’: Extreme heat fueled by climate change putting farmworkers’ lives on the line
Lindsay Schnell, USA TODAY
Ricardo Sotelo called his wife, Lupita, three times on June 30, 2015. He repeated the same message at 10 a.m., noon and 3 p.m.: “I don’t feel good. I really don’t feel good.”
They were both working Olsen Brothers Farms in eastern Washington – Lupita in the warehouse, and Ricardo picking blueberries in the scorching sun. Temperatures topped 107 degrees that day, and Lupita recalls there was no shade or water in sight.
At home by 5 p.m., Ricardo clutched his chest and complained of a severe headache. Worried, his 15-year-old daughter rushed him to the hospital. By 6 p.m. he was dead. The cause: heatstroke.
“I never thought, coming from Mexico, that this would happen in the United States, that my husband would die at work,” Lupita said through a translator, explaining that she and Ricardo had come to America from Sonora, in 2011 in search of a better life.
But for thousands of farmworkers, extreme temperatures – as evidenced in intense heat waves gripping the U.S. this summer – pose an increasing threat, particularly as climate change warms the planet at a rapid rate.
A deadly and record-breaking heat wave in parts of the Western U.S. and Canada earlier this summer would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of climate change, according to a study by leading scientists, who said global warming made the intense temperatures at least 150 times more likely to occur.
Pedro Lucas, center, nephew of farmworker Sebastian Francisco Perez, talks about his uncle’s death on July 1, 2021, near St. Paul, Ore.
Just 3 states have protective rules in place
Farmworkers, most of them immigrants, some documented and some not, are responsible for the lush spreads that adorn most Americans tables: They pick blueberries and cherries in Washington, figs and olives in California, citrus in Florida, peaches, plums and apples in Texas.
That fragrant fir decorating your living room every December likely arrived because of a farmworker in Oregon, the nation’s main producer of Christmas trees.
But farmworkers feed Americans often without any sort of protections from the American government. Just three states – California, Washington and Minnesota – have permanent rules and regulations that protect farmworkers from extreme heat.
As extreme temperatures and weather events become more common – often forcing workers to complete tasks in the hottest part of the day – advocates and sympathetic lawmakers worry about the future of farmworking in America. Will regulation and enforcement keep pace with climate change? Or will debates about the validity of science continue to put lives at risk?
Lorena González, a candidate for Seattle mayor, grew up working in fields with her family and says “thousands of people who work outside every day are bearing the brunt of our inaction” on climate change.
Lorena González, 44, the president of Seattle’s city council and a candidate for Seattle mayor, spent her childhood in central Washington picking cherries with her migrant family, earning her first paycheck at 8.
She still remembers the crippling heat, the layers of clothing worn to protect her skin from sunburns, the gallons of water they carried to every tree. She knows first-hand the risks farmworkers face every day, and what could happen if local and federal regulations aren’t passed in a timely fashion.
“It is a danger that our legislatures are stuck in their status quo of ‘legislate as usual,’” González said. “When you’re in the midst of a crisis, which is what climate change is, you have to figure out how to adapt your governance model in order to respond to the emerging need that’s before you.
“It’s just outrageous … there are thousands and thousands of people who work outside every day who are bearing the brunt of our inaction.”
Farmworker life expectancy: 49 years
On June 28, as temperatures skyrocketed to 117 degrees in the Willamette Valley, threatening Oregon’s all-time high of 119, Reyna Lopez told USA TODAY that something catastrophic could happen.
Lopez, the executive director of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s largest farmworkers union, had already started to hear whispers that the heat had turned deadly. By Tuesday she had confirmation, when news broke about Perez.
At the time of his passing, Oregon had no heat-related rules to protect farmworkers. Initially expected in 2020, heat-related rules were delayed when COVID hit. Lopez called the COVID reasoning “a cop-out,” pointing out that farmworkers continued to labor through COVID, enduring historic heat waves, wildfire smoke that destroyed air quality and an ice storm in January.
On July 8, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, in conjunction with Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), announced emergency heat rules, which mandate access to shade and cold water and, when temperatures hit 90 degrees, 10-minute breaks every two hours. Her office told USA TODAY that permeant rules are expected “by the fall” but didn’t give a specific date.
Washington followed suit the next day, announcing expanded heat exposure protections – including paid breaks – that enhance the laws already in place. Gov. Jay Inslee, one of the nation’s leading voices on climate change, acknowledged the need for updated regulations in a statement, saying, “Our state has rules in place to ensure these risks are mitigated, however, the real impacts of climate change have changed conditions since those rules were first written and we are responding.”
Neither state has rules that workers be sent home if temperatures reach a certain high.
That could be problematic, according to Kristie Ebi, a professor at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington. Ebi has worked on issues of climate change and health for 25 years, and says temperatures don’t have to reach 115 degrees to do long-term damage to the human body.
Multiple studies have shown that prolonged exposure to high temperatures can ravage a person’s kidneys. Some of the world’s hottest regions, including Sri Lanka and Central America, where farmworking is common, have experienced a spike in kidney disease, which can lead to death.
A worker looks at a photo of Sebastian Francisco Perez who died while working in an extreme heat wave near St. Paul, Ore.
“I’m more concerned about the next decade or two than I am about the middle of the century,” Ebi said. “We are so unprepared. Temperatures will be higher mid-century, yes, and we’ll have even longer, more intense heat waves than we’re having now, and how intense will depend on our greenhouse gas emissions.
“But it’s the short-term we need to think about. How can we start investing in critical infrastructure that people need right now to be prepared for the climate change that’s already happening?”
U.S. senators propose protections
In March, a group of U.S. senators introduced the Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness and Fatality Prevention Act. In 2004, Valdivia died of heat stroke in California after picking grapes in 105 degrees for 10 consecutive hours. When Valdivia fell ill, his employer declined to call an ambulance and told Valdivia’s son to drive him to the ER instead. During the drive Valdivia, then 53, started foaming at the mouth. He died before he reached the hospital.
Organizations such as United Farm Workers, headquartered in California and the nation’s largest farmworking union, have lobbied strongly for the bill, and previously testified in front of Congress about the risks farmworkers face working in the heat. The bill has not been brought to the floor for a vote.
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., a co-sponsor of that bill, told USA TODAY in an email that he was “deeply saddened” by the death of Perez and that it was “a stark reminder that as climate chaos progresses, those who will pay the steepest costs will often be the most vulnerable in society … we can and must do more to ensure farmworkers receive every necessary protection from extreme heat.”
Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, gestures before a chart showing warming temperatures.
Merkley is also bullish about the need to protect farmworkers from wildfire smoke. Previously, he’s pushed for legislation that would do exactly that, introducing the Farmworker Smoke Protection Act with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., in 2019. Merkley said he plans to introduce an updated version of that legislation in the coming weeks.
At PCUN, Lopez was frustrated and surprised to see that Oregon’s emergency heat rules didn’t include anything for smoke, despite a historic drought in 2021 that’s likely to lead to another brutal fire season in the West. Lopez wants those rules now, not after wildfire smoke chokes anyone who steps outside to work.
California has smoke-related rules, but Ira Cuello-Martinez, PCUN’s climate policy associate – a position the organization recently added because climate change has become such a crucial piece of protecting farmworkers – said the California rules should not be the standard.
According to the California OSHA website, smoke-related rules are based on the Air Quality Index. When AQI hits 151, which is officially considered “unhealthy,” employers must provide workers with respirators, like N-95 masks, and encourage use of them. When the AQI hits 500, employers must require use of respirators even though at 301 AQI and higher, air is considered hazardous.
And there’s nothing that says when AQI hits a certain number – the scale only goes to 500 – work should be suspended for the day.
“That was a mistake on Cal OSHA’s end – that’s unbearably unhealthy,” Cuello-Martinez said, expressing worry that Oregon might adopt similar guidelines. “No one should be outside in those conditions.”
Last summer when COVID shuttered numerous restaurants, the only work available to many immigrants was in the fields. Workers told Cuello-Martinez about wildfire smoke so bad it stung their eyes and made them unable to see, how they got so nauseous they couldn’t stop vomiting. They were worried about working in hazardous conditions, but they didn’t have any other income opportunities.
A farmworker wipes sweat from his neck while working in St. Paul, Ore., as a heat wave bakes the Pacific Northwest in record-high temperatures on July 1, 2021.
Cuello-Martinez is concerned about the government’s ability to keep pace with climate change and adjust rules as more data becomes available about the long-term impact of working in extreme heat or smoky conditions.
“We don’t want life expectancy to continue decreasing,” he said.
‘A life of sacrifice so Americans can eat’
Along with rules based in science, Lopez and Cuello-Martinez also want disaster pay for farmworkers, so that if conditions are hazardous for any reason, farmworkers could stay home and not suffer financially. They think rules about air conditioning in employer-provided housing – PCUN estimates that about 9,000 of Oregon’s 87,000 field workers and hand harvesters live in employer-provided housing – need to be adopted immediately.
Lopez, Cuello-Martinez and other farmworking advocates, worry that climate-related deaths among farmworkers are severely underreported.
“I think about it every day,” Lopez said. “There are people in the deepest, darkest corners of rural Oregon that I have no idea about – and I guarantee you that there were multiple people who died (because of the heat) that we don’t know about.”
For Lopez, the fight feels personal. When she heard about Perez’s death she thought about how it could have been her mother, her father, her uncle or aunt or brother or sister.
“From the moment farmworkers leave their country due to economic hardship and come work in the fields, they’re living a life of sacrifice so Americans can eat,” Lopez said.
Lupita Sotelo, second from left, lost her husband, Ricardo, in 2015, when he died of heatstroke after spending hours working in the fields of eastern Washington picking blueberries.It’s a truth Sotelo knows too well.
Now 50, Sotelo doesn’t think her body can handle working outside much longer. The farm she works at now is better though, she said: Her supervisor checks in on workers regularly, making sure they have water and take breaks in shade. When temperatures hit 91 last week, the farm called it a day and sent everyone home around 1 p.m.
This has been the hottest year she’s experienced in the decade she’s been in the U.S., Sotelo said. And though she said she will “never get over the pain of losing my husband,” she could not mourn forever. So she’ll continue to pick blueberries and cherries, doing her part to feed America.
Working in the fields is “the only option we have,” she said in Spanish. “We have to pay bills, too.”
Follow national correspondent Lindsay Schnell on Twitter at @Lindsay_Schnell
I grew up in England, where gun violence was unheard of. I never once worried that someone might have a gun or that my life might be affected by gun violence.
Here in the United States, it’s impossible to find someone whose life hasn’t been impacted by gun violence. If Americans could see just how violent our society is, and how guns contribute to that violence, we might start to consider that our “rights” are meaningless if the cost is human life.
Gun violence is going to continue to get worse until people wake up from their stupor and realize that having more than 300 million firearms in circulation doesn’t make us safer. Rather, it makes us an outlier, the most violent and deadly society among the world’s modern and affluent countries.
David Tempest, Mar Vista
..
To the editor: We shouldn’t let gun worship define American patriotism and, for the most part we don’t.
But we have just had a president who was the very definition of toxic masculinity, and gun worship is a part of toxic masculinity. So we’re stuck with these gun nuts who consider themselves patriots, even though most of us think they do not deserve to be called thus.
The scariest part of Granderson’s column is that his examples of what seem like thwarted mass shootings show our police and judges don’t take the dangers posed by people holed up in hotel rooms with small arsenals seriously.
Joan DaVanzo, Long Beach
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To the editor: With the sad increase in homicides, I was reminded of my dad’s words when my sister and I would argue. His plaintive plea: “Can’t we all just get along?”
Such a simplistic answer to a complicated problem, right?
Now, I want to shout in the same exasperated tone my father had, “People, we gotta be nicer to each other!”
Red Tide, stench of dead fish hangs over Fort De Soto beaches
Matt Cohen, Tampa Bay Times
TIERRA VERDE — A handful of anglers cast their lines off Fort De Soto’s fishing pier on Friday into Red Tide-infested waters.
In the sand below them lay dead snook and tarpon, grouper and horseshoe crabs, eels and pufferfish. The stench of dead marine life filled the air at Fort De Soto Park on Friday, one of the crown jewels of Pinellas County beach tourism.
One family waded out and tried putting their baby in the water. The baby cried.
They all drove past an 8 foot by 11 foot sign at the toll both with this warning in bold, italicized capital letters: RED TIDE.
None of those anglers or beach-goers wished to speak to a Tampa Bay Times reporter about why they had braved fish kills and Red Tide to visit the beach. Not many chose to join them on a summer morning in July.
While huge fish kills are being cleaned from St. Petersburg’s shoreline, Red Tide remains a problem for the Pinellas beaches as well.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission’s Red Tide map shows high concentrations of the Karenia brevis cells that cause Red Tide were found along the county’s Gulf shores at Fort De Soto Bay Pier, Bunces Pass near the Pinellas Bayway, the 7th Avenue Pier near Pass-A-Grille Channel and as far north as Indian Shores Beach.
There were also areas of medium concentrations in water samples taken near Madeira Beach and Clearwater Beach.
The fish kills within Fort De Soto Park appeared to be mostly limited to the southern edge of the beaches, but the smell was everywhere.
While there are high concentrations of Red Tide found near Pass-a-Grille Beach, hardly any fish had washed ashore there.
Inside Fort De Soto, signs for Saturday’s Top Gun Triathlon — the biking is set to take place along the park’s roads, while the water will be used for swimming — remained in place on Friday. The organizers did not return calls for comment, but its Facebook page indicated the event will still be held.
Just outside the park, Peter Clark, president of Tampa Bay Watch in Tierra Verde, said the area is seeing far more dead fish over the last few days.
“There is a pretty strong Red Tide blooming right now,” Clark said.
Clark said the Red Tide is now killing fish in the Tierra Verde waters itself, whereas before dead fish from Tampa Bay washed ashore. He said he’s seen poisoned fish struggling on the surface of the water.
This week, his walks outside have been met with the pungent odor of dead sea life. He urges residents to check the Red Tide levels of whatever beaches or waterfront spot they visit before they go out there.
Red Tide resources
There are several online resources that can help residents stay informed and share information about Red Tide:
Florida Poison Control Centers have a toll-free 24/7 hotline to report illnesses, including from exposure to Red Tide: 1-800-222-1222
To report fish kills and get them cleaned up in Tampa Bay, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 1-800-636-0511 or file a fish kill report online.
To report them in St. Petersburg, call the Mayor’s Action Center at 727-893-7111 or use St. Petersburg’s seeclickfix website.
Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the county’s tourism wing, runs an online beach dashboard at www.beachesupdate.com.
Beachgoers should avoid swimming around dead fish.
Those with chronic respiratory problems should be particularly careful and “consider staying away” from places with a Red Tide bloom.
People should not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.
Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.
Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.
Visitors to the beach can wear paper masks, especially if the wind is blowing in.
Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County
