Thousands of Americans were left without power after a series of storms battered the United States from coast to coast last week, and some are still suffering.
As of Friday afternoon, more than 91,000 customers were without power in Oregon, according to poweroutage.us, a website that tracks outages across the country. Local reports say some people have been without power and heat for almost a week.
While many people may view a power outage as a disruption to daily life, experts told ABC News that power outages can have physical and mental health effects.
“It's an inconvenience for some people, but it's life-threatening for others, and we need to protect those whose lives are at risk,” said Joan Casey, an assistant professor in the University of Washington's School of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. the doctor said.
Power outages are especially dangerous for people using medical equipment that requires electricity, such as CPAP machines, power wheelchairs, electric heart pumps, and oxygen concentrators.
A study conducted by Casey last year that looked at three years of power outages found that there were thousands of power outages lasting more than eight hours, a long time for medically high-risk groups to go without equipment. There is a possibility that
“Eight hours is a good amount of time when you're talking about health,” she says. “If the power outage lasts for eight hours, I think there is a significant likelihood that the health of people living in that area will be affected, especially those who rely on backup power to run medical equipment. That's kind of the limit of what you can do without recharging.”
Mr Casey said power outages can also be difficult for people with respiratory conditions such as asthma. You may have to take the stairs because your home nebulizer, which requires electricity, may not work or you live in a building that does not have an operating elevator.
This could increase the number of people visiting hospitals during power outages. Research shows that when New York City experienced a power outage in August 2003, hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses spiked.
Additionally, if people use alternative fuel and heat sources, such as cars in garages, after a power outage, they can suffer from carbon monoxide poisoning, exposing them to potentially lethal levels of the odorless, colorless gas. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Power outages also have an impact on mental health. Previous research has shown that disruption caused by power outages can cause people to experience anxiety, stress, and a decreased sense of well-being.
“This makes sense,” Casey said. “It's stressful not having access to heat. It's stressful worrying about whether your food will spoil or whether you can get medical care.”
“So it's not surprising to me that people experience these emotions during a power outage,” she continued. “In particular, it is well known that power outages co-occur with other weather events, so when a power outage occurs during an ongoing extreme winter storm, it becomes a stressful life event. .”
As climate change worsens, leading to more extreme weather events such as large storms, wildfires, heat waves, and hurricanes, more power outages are likely. From 2000 to 2021, about 83% of major power outages in the United States were caused by weather-related events, according to the nonprofit organization Climate Central.
Casey said another reason why the number of power outages will increase as climate change worsens is because people use more electricity to cope (such as installing more air conditioning equipment to cope with heat waves). He said this could lead to outages if the power grid overheats.
She said the best solution is to slow climate change, such as improving buildings so they require less electricity to heat and cool them and increasing the use of renewable energy.
“At the end of the day, this is not a problem on an individual level. This is a societal problem, and if we want to solve the problem, we need to apply these solutions,” Casey said.
