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A recent study in Nature Communications analyzed three years of power outages across the U.S., and found high rates in four regions: Louisiana, Arkansas, central Alabama, and northern Michigan.
The study was led by Joan Casey, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. Previously, a 2021 review led by Casey found that worldwide power outages increased in number and severity within the last decade, and included an assessment of how climate change is causing more severe weather and rapidly aging electricity grids.
The new study is the first county-level analysis of power outages, which the U.S. federal government reports only at the state level. The study found that between 2018 and 2020, more than 231,000 power outages lasting more than an hour occurred nationwide. Of those, 17,484 stretched at least eight hours—a duration widely viewed as medically relevant, said Casey.
The researchers also looked at how power outages overlapped with severe weather and found that heavy rain in a given area makes a power outage five times more likely. A tropical cyclone with heavy precipitation on a hot day—which happens yearly in the Gulf Coast, makes power outages 52 times more likely.
Zeroing in on data from sources that included power companies, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the federal government, the researchers were able to show not only which counties experienced the most and longest outages, but also which counties had large populations of vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries who used electronic medical equipment, such as infusion pumps, mobility devices, and oxygen concentrators.
In a statement about the study, Joan Casey suggested that physicians have conversations with patients who use electronic medical equipment to confirm a plan if the power goes out. Backup generators, while good choices, may not be affordable or may not be allowed by landlords. Generators also pose a risk of carbon monoxide poisoning when improperly installed.
In the study, the researchers noted that “it is crucial to consider that DME (durable medical equipment) users are particularly susceptible to the health consequences of outages and said that other studies show that during outages, emergency rooms see a higher proportion of DME users seeking care and that “longer outages especially endanger DME users due to possible limited battery life of equipment.” For example, typical battery life ranges from 3 to 4 hours for oxygen concentrators on the lowest settings.
The researchers say their results are important because, despite health consequences of outages, few studies have characterized their duration, geographic distribution, linkage to weather/climate events, or exposure disparities.
“Policymakers and public health and emergency preparedness officials need this data to equitably allocate resources to communities most burdened by and vulnerable to outage events,” the study authors wrote.
The researchers also noted that their county-level power outage exposure data could also support future large-scale epidemiology studies “as we continue to learn more about the health effects of these primarily climate-driven events.”
“Actionable climate data must be as hyperlocal as possible to most effectively identify and address the needs of the highest-risk patients and households,” commented Renee Salas, MD, MPH, who was not involved in the study. Salas, an emergency medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, researches the effects of climate change.
“As climate change accelerates,” she added, “we must start considering backup power options for patients who depend on electrical medical devices as essential interventions, similar to health-protective cooling for extreme heat and air filtration systems for wildfire smoke.”