Climate Change Is Bringing Legionnaire’s Disease to a Town Near You

This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The air conditioners have made overtime this hot summer, from these tiny window units to the massive AC towers which serve well -wrapped apartments in large cities. And although they bring the relief of fresh air, these devices also create the conditions for dangerous bacteria to multiply and spread.

A disease transmitted by particularly unpleasant bacteria is currently spreading to New York using these enormous cooling units as a vector: legionnaire disease. Bacterial pneumonia, which is generally reproduced every summer in the largest city in the United States, has reported more than 100 people and has killed five in an increasing epidemic.

If you do not live in New York or in the Northeast, you may have never heard of a legionnaire, but this threat of public health may not be a niche much longer.

Climate change helps to make legionnaire disease that are both more abundant in places where it already exists and to create the potential to move to new places where the population may not be used to it. The cities of the northeast and midwest, where the warmer weather encounters older infrastructure, has reported more cases in recent years. Recently, Legionella The bacteria have been discovered in the water system of a nursing home in Dearborn, Michigan – one of the states, as well as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Wisconsin, which have experienced more activity in recent years.

Anyone can contract legionnaire by inhaling tiny drops containing bacteria, and symptoms – headache, shortness of breath – to appear in a few days. It can cause severe pulmonary infection, with a mortality rate of around 10%.

While healthy people often experience few symptoms, more vulnerable children – children, the elderly, pregnant people and people with compromise immune systems – behave a serious danger in the disease. About 5,000 people die in the United States of the Legionnaire in the United States, many of them living in low-income accommodation with obsolete cooling equipment where bacteria can more easily develop and spread.

Legionnaire’s disease is a microcosm of the impact of climate change on low -income communities. As warmer temperatures facilitate the spread of the disease, the most vulnerable populations socially will pay the highest price.

The collision of legionnaire disease, climate change and economic disparities

Legionnaire’s disease was documented for the first time after an unusually aggressive epidemic of pneumonia at an American Legion conference in Philadelphia in 1976. Soon, disease control centers and prevention scientists confirmed the cause of mysterious disease: a bacteria unknown which was therefore named Legionella. LegionellaUnfortunately, is everywhere – in streams, lakes and water pipes across the country.

But generally, it occurs at such low concentrations and is so far away that it is not a threat to humans. Generally.

Now, city health officials have found bacteria in large cooling tanks that serve buildings in New York, especially in Harlem. Cooling tanks are ideal places for the legionnaire to develop and spread. They are filled with stagnant hot water which is more welcoming for bacterial growth. Like an evaporative cooler, systems convert hot stagnant water into fresh air for residents of apartments. They can spray wheelbarrows loaded with outdoor bacteria, dispersing it through the surrounding air, where it can enter a person’s lungs when they inhale. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, 80% of the legionary cases are linked to drinking water systems.