Wildfire smoke, extreme heat among rising health risks from climate change
This article was written by Ben Spurr and was published in the Toronto Star on June 17, 2024.
For the first time ever, Toronto is offering residents a place where they can breathe easier this summer.
The city plans to provide six “cleaner air spaces” — buildings equipped with MERV 13 filters where people can take a moment to literally catch their breath — as part of a pilot project spurred by last year’s historically bad wildfire season that blanketed Toronto in smoke.
“Wildfire smoke can affect the health of the population, especially for people who are vulnerable,” said
Dr. Howard Shapiro, associate medical officer of health.
He said the city and Toronto Public Health will assess the pilot project — which will operate at city hall, Metro Hall, and civic centres in East York, York, North York and Scarborough — after the 2024 wildfire season “and make a determination if there is a need for expansion in future years.”
The clean air spaces are just the latest measure Toronto is taking to defend itself from climate change, which, far from being a distant threat, is posing increasingly serious challenges for the city in the present day.
More extreme weather is already here. The number of days each year when Toronto temperatures climb above 30 C has risen to an average of about 18, up from eight in the 1950s, according to a March city report.
It warned that Toronto is experiencing “hotter, wetter and wilder” weather, and “these conditions are expected to worsen.”
Joanna Beaven-Desjardins, executive director of Toronto Emergency Management, said extreme weather is a growing concern for her office.
“It ranks high up” on the list of threats, she said. “We’re starting to see an increase in (extreme heat) events. And so it is something that we’re watching.”
With summer just around the corner, here’s how the city and its agencies plan to help residents cope this year.
Hot weather relief
The clean air rooms are an addition to the city’s heat relief strategy, which aims to reduce heat-related illness and death, particularly among vulnerable groups like children, seniors, people with chronic health problems, and homeless people.
Toronto Public Health and Environment and Climate Change Canada estimate heat already contributes to an average of 120 premature deaths annually in the city.
The strategy includes a “heat relief network” of roughly 600 publicly accessible facilities across Toronto that offer air conditioning or other forms of cooling, like libraries, community centres, malls and swimming pools, and which the city encourages residents to use during heat alerts.
Hours at seven outdoor pools are also extended to 11:45 p.m. during heat warnings, and outreach workers hand out water and sunscreen to homeless people.
Heat emergency
Brownouts, transit shutdowns, building evacuations, and even roads buckling under high temperatures are among the challenges the city could face under a heat emergency, which would be declared if a heat warning is severe or long-lasting enough to threaten social services or critical infrastructure.
A heat emergency would activate the city’s Emergency Operations Centre — the same group that oversaw Toronto’s COVID-19 strategy — to co-ordinate the response across divisions.
Beaven-Desjardins said to her knowledge Toronto has never declared a heat emergency, but it’s something her office actively prepares for, including in a simulated exercise with the province in May.
She said that due to security concerns she couldn’t share details of response plans. But they could require the city to secure power generators, plot out safe transportation routes, and ensure residents have access to food and water.
She said the city is also prepared to work with corporate partners to use large buildings like the Rogers Centre or Scotiabank Arena as evacuation sites, staging areas, or warehouses.
Transit
To prevent the so-called “hot cars” that in previous summers had subway riders suffering through 32.5 C commutes, the TTC undertakes a seasonal maintenance program to ensure air conditioning on its trains, buses and streetcars is working. Crews also audit vehicles returning from service and swap out any with broken HVAC units “as quickly as possible … without disrupting service,” said agency spokesperson Stuart Green.
The TTC also has to watch for “sun kinks” — deviations in subway track caused by thermal expansion. When temperatures reach higher than 35 C, the agency issues slow orders for susceptible sections of the line, reducing trains to 40 kilometres per hour.
Heat isn’t the only extreme weather the TTC has to contend with. In 2018, nine of its streetcars were damaged in flash floods, including one swamped by waste from an overflowing sewer. Green said the agency clears track drains prior to storms, and operators are directed not to drive into pooling water.
Community housing
James Nowlan, executive director of Toronto’s environment and climate division, said “one of the biggest risks that we have is the impact of extreme heat in our buildings,” particularly “older buildings and those that have vulnerable populations.”
The city is working on a bylaw that could require landlords to keep apartments below a specific temperature, but staff aren’t expected to report back until next year.
The Toronto Community Housing Corp. is the city’s largest landlord, and has nearly 90,000 tenants who need to keep cool, a difficult task in older buildings that lack central air. The social housing agency doesn’t track how many tenants have air conditioning.
During heat warnings, staff in TCHC buildings set up cooling rooms, or post a notice about the nearest air-conditioned public place. The housing agency also advises tenants to keep blinds closed during the day to block the sun, and to unplug appliances they’re not using to reduce ambient heat.
Toronto Zoo
It’s not just humans that need to beat the heat.
The Toronto Zoo takes steps to keep its roughly 3,000 animals chilled as well.
Molly McGuire, the zoo’s manager of welfare science, said staff can deploy misting machines, give critters the option of air-conditioned enclosures, or freeze their meals into giant popsicles.
“Sometimes it’s just giving them a large pile of ice that they can lie on,” she said.
Last year, zoo staff kept animals indoors to protect them from wildfire smoke. Keepers monitor their charges for indications they’re having trouble breathing, which McGuire said can be challenging because animals are good at hiding signs of distress.
So in addition to laboured breathing, staff watch for behavioural changes, like inactivity or not wanting to take part in training.
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