Human Health
Climate-related events—heat, wildfire smoke and poor air quality—are increasing, along with serious illness and death. Direct health costs of air pollution and climate change in the U.S. have been estimated to exceed $800 billion per year, and are anticipated to increase as temperatures rise. This estimate does not include other health-related economic costs, such as food and water contamination, supply chain disruption, long-term health consequences, reduced quality of life and diminished mental health.
To learn more about climate change impacts to Idahoans’ health, please click on the icons to the right to open the human health technical report and snapshot.
For additional resources and tools related to climate change and health, please click the icon to the right.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s BenMAP-CE is an open-source computer program that calculates economic value of changes in air quality.