Climate change and health

Canada's climate is changing, which impacts the environment and can affect our health. Health hazards, such as extreme heat, poor air quality, and increases in vector-borne diseases, can influence the health and well-being of Peel residents.

Peel Public Health completed Canada's first Climate Change and Health Vulnerability Assessment report to determine the exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of climate-related hazards in Peel.

The report provides information on how Peel can build community resiliency to avoid or reduce the health harms associated with climate change. It acknowledges that some populations are at a greater risk of the health-related harms of climate change and recognizes that additional understanding of how climate and health risks disproportionately affect certain populations is needed. This understanding will ensure all communities in Peel are resilient to the health-related impacts of our changing climate.

This report updates the “2012 Health Vulnerability to Climate Change Report: Assessing Exposure, Sensitivity, and Adaptive Capacity”. Several changes have taken place since the release of the 2012 report, including newly released Peel-specific climate data.

The report keeps much of the original content from 2012, as it provides background and context. Where possible, data from the 2012 report is compared to the updated data, available as of January 2023.

Access the Climate change and health vulnerability assessment report.

Report findings

Peel’s changing climate can potentially cause harm by:

• Increasing heat-related illness and death.
• Making air quality worse, affecting breathing and heart-related conditions.
• Increasing the risk of injuries and death from extreme weather.
• Increasing food and water contamination resulting in illness.
• Increasing the incidence of vector-borne illnesses associated with the spread of vectors (e.g., ticks and mosquitoes) as climate becomes more favourable to their survival.
• Population sub-groups may be more vulnerable to ill-health outcomes related to climate change due to differential exposure or climate-related sensitivities.

Recommendations

Peel Public Health should:

• Use the report as a foundation to begin broader discussions around public health vulnerability to climate change in Peel region.
• Share the report with key stakeholders and engage in knowledge translation activities.
• Conduct community and stakeholder consultation to capture social and cultural distinctions present in Peel region to further inform programming and policy.
• Map vulnerable populations and neighbourhood characteristics.
• Continue to gather relevant health information on an ongoing basis to improve our understanding of local climate change health impacts in Peel region.
• Conduct further work on how mental health and health equity are impacted by climate change.
• Develop an implementation plan to address identified vulnerabilities.