Hidden Health Costs Uncovered.

Climate change is taking a huge toll on Americans' health, so much so that it could constitute a public health crisis, suggests a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the University of California, San Francisco. Published in the journal GeoHealth, the study finds that Americans endured more than $10,000,000,000 in health costs from 10 climate-sensitive events during a recent 12-month period.

These public health costs are rarely, if ever, tallied in government analyses, which typically address property, agriculture, and infrastructure losses from severe weather events--leaving out the deaths, hospitalizations, emergency department visits, outpatient medical care, prescribed medications, and lost wages associated with those events.

"Climate change represents a major public health emergency, but its destructive and expensive toll on Americans' health has largely been absent from the climate policy debate," says lead author and NRDC scientist Vijay Limaye. "Our research shows that health-related costs add at least another 26% to the national price tag for annual weather-related damages.

'This continuing untold human suffering and staggering...