It is summer in Maine, the time of year when we are grateful to live here, or at least to visit. So far this summer, I’ve enjoyed glorious trips to Maine’s coastal state parks, visual and performing arts venues and restaurants across the state where I have enjoyed tasty meals in the open air. Fairs and festivals all over the state are in full swing. It really is the way life should be.

To have lived in Maine for a while, or for a lifetime, is to remember in the not-so-distant past that summer weather was cooler and less humid than it is now, and air quality alerts were rare. Increasingly, however, Mainers are dealing with hotter temperatures, worsening air quality and other impacts due to climate change.

As I write this column, Mainers are under an air quality alert from the National Weather Service due to smoke from distant wildfires that at one point today was in the “unhealthy” category. Just this month we’ve experienced several days with temperatures at or near 90 degrees, with heat indices above 100 degrees.

Weather shifts happen normally, no doubt, and we are used to the weather being unpleasant or uncooperative. But there are more serious consequences to this recent trend of hotter and more polluted summers — Maine’s changing climate is making us sick.

Five years ago, I polled physicians in Maine, and 78% said that climate change poses a threat to the health of their patients. The top health conditions they identified as worsened by climate change were asthma and other respiratory diseases, tick-borne diseases, heat stroke and other heat-related illnesses, allergies and mental health.

They acknowledged that some Mainers are more vulnerable than others, including children, the elderly, those with chronic health conditions and those who work outdoors, but they also noted that we are all at risk, as is the resilience of our health care systems.

Unfortunately, few doctors reported speaking to their patients about how climate change affects their health, which is understandable but also a missed opportunity to help people learn how to protect themselves as climate impacts become more frequent and more severe.

Since this study was done, the U.S. has experienced three of its hottest years on record, and 2025 is likely to end up in the top four, so Maine’s clinicians are no doubt seeing even more of these health impacts today.

It is not always easy to attribute our health problems to climate change because it doesn’t cause a new set of human diseases but rather makes existing diseases worse. We call it a threat magnifier for ill health. For example, more people go to hospital emergency departments suffering
from heat stroke on hot days, and extreme heat increases mortality due to underlying cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

On June 24 of this year, towns all over Maine set heat records, and the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention recorded an enormous spike in ED visits that day due to heat-related illnesses.

Air pollution, including fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) in wildfire smoke, causes more ED visits because of asthma. Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island have the highest asthma rates in the nation, with more than 13% of adults diagnosed. Exposure to PM 2.5 is also linked to heart disease, adverse pregnancy outcomes, dementia and poor mental health. Much of the smoke here comes from Western wildfires, and it’s becoming more common, so it matters to us what happens elsewhere.

Maine also leads the nation in the rate of tick-borne diseases, particularly Lyme disease, along with Vermont and Rhode Island. The relationship between climate and infected ticks is complex, but we know that cases of tick-borne diseases have risen significantly in Maine since 2000, and climate change plays a part.

These are serious diseases that can cause significant long-term health problems if not treated in a timely manner. In my survey of Maine physicians, more than half reported that climate change contributes to mental health problems in their patients. Uncertainties of extreme weather, particularly coastal impacts, can be stressful, and experiencing heat stress worsens mental health.

Worry about climate change and its wide-ranging effects is prevalent, particularly in young people. In a recent poll of Maine college students conducted by one of my research students, nearly half reported feeling climate anxiety.

There are many other health impacts of climate change, including injuries and deaths from extreme weather, as we tragically saw earlier this month in Texas, and increased food insecurity and child malnutrition due to crop failures, changing food systems and rising food prices.

In order to be able to cope with the effects of climate change that we are already experiencing, not to mention worsening impacts in the future, we must become better aware of health threats, improve monitoring and treatments and strengthen the responsiveness of our health care systems.

We also need to do more, not less, as the Trump administration is doing, on climate action. Instead of undermining American science and public health, disinvesting in medical care and emergency response and retreating from our climate leadership roles and obligations, we need to recognize that climate action improves our health, and that is a necessary outcome for all of us.

Fortunately, Maine has a robust climate plan that will help protect us. Pay attention to what is happening with respect to climate change, because no matter your political stripes, your health is at risk, now and in the future.