{"id":510,"date":"2025-02-26T12:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-26T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/?p=510"},"modified":"2025-02-28T19:14:16","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T19:14:16","slug":"you-need-to-start-taking-airborne-fungal-outbreaks-seriously","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/2025\/02\/26\/you-need-to-start-taking-airborne-fungal-outbreaks-seriously\/","title":{"rendered":"You need to start taking airborne fungal outbreaks seriously"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"

Illustration of thick-walled arthroconidia and arthrospores from the fungus Coccidioides immitis. | Kateryna Kon\/Science Photo Library\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As our planet gets increasingly warmer, we\u2019re seeing in real-time the myriad of ways our climate is changing: unbearably hot summers<\/a>, extreme cold snaps<\/a>, and more dangerous<\/a> natural disasters<\/a>. And when our environment changes, so do we \u2014 especially in regards to our health.<\/p>\n

Valley fever<\/a>, a fungal disease that invades our lungs, is one of these not-so-obvious public health concerns. The fungus, which is typically present in the western United States, is projected to spread to new frontiers<\/a> across the country, my former colleague Keren Landman reported back in 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We knew then that climate change had played some<\/em> kind of role. Now, more evidence is coming in about this looming public health threat. Last week, the Journal of the American Medical Association<\/em> (JAMA<\/em>) published a brief aimed at practicing doctors<\/a> that drove home just how neglected Valley fever \u2014 and by proxy, other diseases like it \u2014 can be.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to the brief, California\u2019s Department of Public Health recorded over 9,000 cases of Valley fever in 2023, the highest number of recorded cases on record. That same year<\/a>, California had multiple storms that drenched the state over the course of a few weeks, after a long period of drought starting in 2020. These conditions \u2014 long spells of extremely dry weather followed by intense rain \u2014 are just right for Valley fever growth and in turn, infections.<\/p>\n

The earliest recorded case<\/a> of Valley fever dates back to the 1890s. For some people, it\u2019s totally asymptomatic. But for others, Valley fever can cause symptoms for weeks or months. And then there\u2019s the unlucky few whose infection travels outside of the lungs and into the skin, bones, or brain. Severe cases can be life-changing and even fatal. <\/p>\n

According to the brief, Valley fever is pretty significantly underdiagnosed \u2014 cases may be up to 10 to 18 times higher than the 10,000 to 20,000 cases reported to the CDC annually. Doctors can miss the signs because the symptoms<\/a> are similar to other respiratory infections: a cough, fever, feeling tired. That ends up delaying treatment for people who end up really needing it. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s some people who get really debilitating forms of this disease, where they are on lifelong treatment. They’re in and out of the hospital,\u201d said Pamela Lee, an infectious disease physician at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and one of the authors of the Valley fever brief. \u201cAnd one of the things that I worry about is that sometimes people can almost dismiss this disease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Climate change is doing more than just making the days hotter or the weather more extreme. It\u2019s shifting how preexisting diseases grow and spread \u2014 and increasing the burden on often underprepared communities and health institutions. In addition to Valley fever, we\u2019re seeing the exacerbation of harmful algal blooms<\/a> in places like Florida, the spread of malaria- and dengue-carrying mosquitos<\/a> in non-endemic areas, and hot days exacerbating already prevalent air pollution inequities<\/a> in Eastern North Carolina.  <\/p>\n

Despite how increasingly important this intersection between climate change, disease, and health is becoming, there still are challenges \u2014 from the scientific to the political \u2014 in doing research that unravels these connections. It\u2019s not enough for these new risks to be observed. Quantifying the health impacts of neglected diseases and public health outbreaks that are attributable to climate change is critical to understanding how we adapt, and the scale of the imminent risks that lie ahead. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think this is another one of those kinds of things that we need to be thinking about as a prevalent and chronic threat that’s going to be riskier for some people more than others \u2014 but that no one is totally free from risk,\u201d said Daniel Swain, co-author of the brief and Future Perfect 50 honoree<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Valley fever rising<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Coccidioides, the fungus that causes Valley fever, lives in the soil of arid states<\/a>. Once the fungal spores in the ground are dispersed into the air, often by the wind or human activities<\/a> like construction projects and farming, it takes inhaling just a few spores to be infected. <\/p>\n

But what\u2019s driving the growth in Coccidioides is an era of weather whiplash<\/a>: rapid swing from one weather extreme to another. In the case of the fungal spores that cause Valley fever, shifts from extremely dry to extremely wet weather are the perfect conditions for Coccidioides to thrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s actually not just enough for it to be dry all the time, or the fungus would never actually grow. It’s also not enough for it to be wet all the time, or it would never aerosolize,\u201d says Swain. \u201cIt actually does require that there be these transitions between wet and dry states in some form.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter<\/a>.<\/h2>\n

Sign up here<\/a> to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

People with jobs that disrupt soil in Valley fever hot spots can have a higher risk of getting infected<\/a>, such as construction workers and agricultural workers. These workers also tend to have challenges in accessing healthcare, leaving them susceptible to forgoing a diagnosis and, if necessary, treatment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are the types of patients that I see all the time where just going to the doctor takes away an entire day of income for them, and they can’t afford that,\u201d Lee told Vox.<\/p>\n

But as our climate changes, researchers expect to see more than just a rise in the number of cases \u2014 they predict that infections will jump beyond its current geographical borders, too. Valley fever will likely spread<\/a> to Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, and the Dakotas in the next 75 years. It\u2019s a public health issue that\u2019s crossing borders where it hasn\u2019t before. \u201cThis is an example of something that we were 100 percent sure has been around for a long time, but has a much greater public health burden that it used to and is probably expanding to new regions,\u201d Swain said.<\/p>\n

The spread of Valley fever imposes a financial cost, too. One study found that the economic burden<\/a> associated with Valley fever in response to climate change could be $18.5 billion a year by 2090, from direct costs like hospitalization to indirect costs like loss of income. Yes, tens of billions of dollars a year from one disease alone.<\/p>\n

Valley fever is just one, singular disease. Now, imagine the total human and economic toll of a heating planet that exacerbates the spread of other illnesses and public health crises. It\u2019s clearly a massive crisis \u2014 but one that researchers are still trying to quantify.<\/p>\n

Unhealthy planet, unhealthy people<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s clear that our changing climate is having some sort of impact on human health. But exactly how climate change is playing a role, and to what extent it\u2019s driving infections and deaths, is still being figured out by researchers.<\/p>\n

Colin Carlson, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University School of Public Health, says there are diseases that researchers know are climate-sensitive, but are still missing observational epidemiological studies to show more concretely how climate change is attributable to the burden of these diseases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a huge amount of literature about climate and health,\u201d Carlson told Vox. \u201cThere’s not as much literature about climate change <\/em>and health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlson maintains a database of studies that compiles this specific literature called the Health Attribution Library<\/a>. <\/strong>The papers in this database quantify the human health impacts (like deaths, injuries, or infections) of human-caused climate change. Dengue<\/a>, malaria<\/a>, heat deaths, and fire-related deaths from air pollution<\/a> have attribution studies, while other diseases like cholera, yellow fever, and West Nile virus haven\u2019t. Beyond infectious diseases, public health concerns like spikes in depression and anxiety may also be attributable to climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there is a huge, strong relationship between temperature and suicides, but we don’t have a global estimate of how many temperature-attributable suicides there are, or how many are attributable to climate change,\u201d says Carlson.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue of doing health impact attributional studies<\/a> is that, ultimately, it\u2019s difficult to do. One big challenge that researchers run into is lacking long-term, large-scale data. Carlson added that his lab did an attribution study on malaria because there was<\/em> data to work with. <\/p>\n

Of course, there are challenges beyond the scientific. The Trump administration\u2019s latest<\/a> policies<\/a> and actions<\/a> don\u2019t bode well for the next four years of progress in climate and public health<\/a>, domestically and abroad<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think the intersection of climate change and public health is particularly concerning because both seem to be partisan, ideological targets right now, specifically, individually,\u201d says Swain. \u201cTogether, they pose a huge threat to the health well-being and the economy of the US.\u201d <\/p>\n

Though many uncertainties lie ahead in the future of climate and public health research, and in turn, the future of human health, Carlson adds that attributional studies can be a point of progress for the people whose lives will be harmed by climate change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese attribution studies are incredibly useful in legal settings, because they can demonstrate that plaintiffs have a basis for their damages,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen climate litigation has been successful, it has often been on the back of health.\u201d<\/p>\n

People in the health space, like clinicians and epidemiologists, can also focus on communicating the risks of climate change on human health to other doctors, patients, and communities \u2014 just as the authors of the Valley fever brief did. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe can’t have healthy humans on an unhealthy planet,\u201d says Lee. \u201cWhat we do, what we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink \u2014 these things do impact our health.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustration of thick-walled arthroconidia and arthrospores from the fungus Coccidioides immitis. | Kateryna Kon\/Science Photo Library\/Getty Images As our planet gets increasingly warmer, we\u2019re seeing in real-time the myriad of ways our climate is changing: unbearably hot summers, extreme cold snaps, and more dangerous natural disasters. And when our environment changes, so do we \u2014…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":513,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/513"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/audiomateria.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}