{"id":105145,"date":"2025-08-23T21:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T21:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/105145\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T21:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T21:36:08","slug":"climate-change-is-bringing-legionnaires-disease-to-a-town-near-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/105145\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate Change Is Bringing Legionnaire\u2019s Disease to a Town Near You"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story originally appeared on Vox<\/a> and is part of the Climate Desk<\/a> collaboration.<\/p>\n

Air conditioners have been working overtime this hot summer, from those tiny window units to the massive AC towers that serve the tightly packed apartment buildings in major cities. And while they bring the relief of cool air, these contraptions also create the conditions for dangerous bacteria to multiply and spread.<\/p>\n

One particularly nasty bacteria-borne illness is currently spreading in New York City using those enormous cooling units as its vector: Legionnaire\u2019s disease. The bacterial pneumonia, which usually recurs each summer in the US\u2019s largest city, has sickened<\/a> more than 100 people and killed five<\/a> in a growing outbreak.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t live in New York City or the Northeast, you may never have heard of Legionnaire\u2019s, but this niche public health threat may not be niche for much longer.<\/p>\n

Climate change is helping to make Legionnaire\u2019s disease both more plentiful in the places where it already exists and creating the potential for it to move to new places where the population may not be accustomed to it. Cities in the Northeast and Midwest, where hotter weather meets older infrastructure, have reported more cases<\/a> in recent years. Recently, Legionella bacteria was discovered<\/a> in a nursing home\u2019s water system in Dearborn, Michigan\u2014one of the states, along with Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Wisconsin<\/a>, that have seen more activity in the past few years<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Anyone can contract Legionnaire\u2019s disease by inhaling tiny drops containing the bacteria, and the symptoms\u2014fever, headache, shortness of breath\u2014appear within days. It can cause a severe lung infection, with a death rate of around 10 percent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While healthier people often experience few symptoms, the more vulnerable\u2014young children, the elderly, pregnant people, and those with compromised immune systems\u2014face serious danger from the illness. Around 5,000 people die every year in the United States from Legionnaire\u2019s disease, many of them<\/a> living in low-income housing with outdated cooling equipment where the bacteria can more readily grow and spread.<\/p>\n

Legionnaire\u2019s disease is a microcosm of climate change\u2019s impact on low-income communities. As warmer temperatures facilitate the spread of disease, the most socially vulnerable populations are going to pay the steepest price.<\/p>\n

The Collision of Legionnaire\u2019s Disease, Climate Change, and Economic Disparities<\/p>\n

Legionnaire\u2019s disease was first documented<\/a> after an unusually aggressive pneumonia outbreak during an American Legion conference in Philadelphia in 1976. Soon, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists confirmed the cause of the mysterious illness: a previously unknown bacteria that was accordingly named Legionella. Legionella, unfortunately, is everywhere\u2014in streams, lakes, and water pipes across the country.<\/p>\n

But usually, it occurs in such low concentrations and is so remote that it doesn\u2019t pose a threat to humans. Usually.<\/p>\n

Now, city health officials have found the bacteria in the large cooling tanks that serve massive apartment buildings across New York City, particularly in Harlem. Cooling tanks are ideal places for Legionnaire\u2019s to grow and spread. They\u2019re filled with stagnant, warm water that is more hospitable to bacterial growth. Like an evaporative cooler, the systems convert warm stagnant water into cool air for apartment dwellers. They can spray mists laden with the bacteria into the open air, dispersing it across the surrounding air, where it can enter a person\u2019s lungs when they inhale. According to the Environmental Protection Agency<\/a>, 80 percent of Legionnaire\u2019s cases are linked to potable water systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story originally appeared on Vox and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Air conditioners have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[12990,4253,5037,192,97,10649,79],"class_list":{"0":"post-105145","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-bacteria","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-climate-desk","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-infectious-disease","14":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}