Health Effects of Drought
Mary-Anna Holden is a former New Jersey BPU Commissioner and Butch Howard is a former South Carolina PSC Commissioner.
The story of weather conditions this year under an unexpectedly strong El Niño brings to mind conditions akin to the story of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” Health-wise, what are the effects if there is too much water, too little water, or a sweet spot where the rainfall is just right?
Last month, we covered the consequences of drought conditions in the Colorado River Basin but would not have expected the lack of wet conditions to increase sickness outbreaks. We’re used to the lessons that history teaches of Yellow Fever outbreaks or Malaria due to the wet breeding grounds of swamps and standing water for mosquitoes, not dry weather conditions causing disease.
It seems counterintuitive, but there has been a rise in infectious diseases due to the dry conditions in the West. “Drought is intrinsically connected to disease through life’s dependence on water,” said Pieter Johnson and Tara Stewart Merrill, in the recent edition of “Trends in Ecology & Evolution.”
They found that climate change isn’t just making the Earth warmer or drier, it is making droughts more variable and less predictable. For instance, they cite the worst megadrought in 1,200 years, which has drained crucial reservoirs like Lake Mead on the Arizona-Nevada border.