Just three days after Mother's Day, a U.S. non-profit is working to shed light on the ways in which climate change can affect pregnant women in Victoria and beyond.
On May 14, Climate Central, which works to communicate climate change science and solutions to the public and decision-makers, released a report highlighting the risks pregnant women brave in the face of sweltering temperatures.
“Extreme heat presents dangerous risks to global maternal health and birth outcomes, and it’s becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change,” reads the nine-page report.
Drawing on daily temperature data from 940 cities and 247 countries and territories, the non-profit calculated the rise of “pregnancy heat-risk days” between 2020 and 2024.
“Pregnancy heat-risk days have maximum temperatures warmer than 95 per cent of temperatures observed at a given location – a threshold associated with an increased risk of preterm birth,” reads the report.
Stifling conditions are also linked to higher rates of hypertension, gestational diabetes, stillbirths and maternal hospitalization and morbidity.
The analysis, which the non-profit began in March, found that during the past five years, climate change has at least doubled the average annual number of days that are dangerously hot for pregnant women in nearly 90 per cent of countries and territories and 63 per cent of cities.
Victoria saw an average of 12 additional pregnancy heat-risk days each year, with climate change accounting for 52 per cent of them. Vancouver logged two fewer days, and B.C. recorded 13 – 45 per cent of which Climate Central attributed to climate change.
Regions with limited access to health care, including the Caribbean, Central and South America, the Pacific Islands, Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, recorded the greatest increases.
Bethany Ricker, a family doctor in Nanaimo and member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, knows firsthand the effects extreme heat can have on pregnant women. She recalls having to rush to a C-section for a mother with urgently high blood pressure – a side-effect of exposure to extreme heat.
“The main takeaway from the research is that extreme heat is a dangerous health risk for pregnant people and newborns and that we are seeing more days of extreme heat now due to climate change, which is caused by human activity,” she said.
The doctor hopes the research will help the non-profit raise awareness about climate change and its negative effects.
“I hope that people have a greater recognition that climate change ... has a huge impact on our health,” she said. “This isn’t something that is faraway and intangible – climate change is something ... that does affect our health on a regular basis and that can put people through scary and difficult situations, as well as increase the cost on our health-care system.”
Kristina Dahl, the vice-president for science at Climate Central, expressed a similar sentiment.
“We thought that looking at this connection and thinking about just how much climate change is increasing pregnancy-related risks would be a powerful way to connect with people,” she said. “We also hope that people see this and ... start thinking about the risks that they face and ways that they can protect themselves."
