What Pittsburgh neighborhood you live in may impact susceptibility to heat-related illness

In the midst of an early summer heat wave and record-breaking temperatures globally, physicians are grappling with a parallel trend: heat-related emergency room visits.

It's almost a given now, they say, that as temperatures rise and heat waves intensify, they see an uptick of people who visit urgent care with heat-related illnesses.

Children, seniors, those without an air conditioner and construction workers who spend long hours outside - often in direct sun or on rooftops - are most sensitive to heat and are often the ones Brent Rau, medical director of Emergency Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital, sees in the emergency room during Pittsburgh's now-yearly heat waves.

"These are the populations we see time and time again," he said. "We can tell it's going to happen when we look ahead and see the temperatures."

Another indicator of risk? Where you live.

A Carnegie Mellon University study from January, which used artificial intelligence and satellite data to categorize dark surfaces in Pittsburgh, found that areas with a greater number of dark surfaces were hotter on average. It also found that neighborhoods impacted by redlining - a decades-old urban development practice that led to segregation - were 12.6% more likely to have these darker surfaces, such as roofs, open parking lots and darker roads, that trap heat.

Researchers examined the map of redlined neighborhoods in Pittsburgh - which include parts of the Hill District, Garfield, the South Side and North Side - and compared it to land surface temperatures across the region, realizing there was ample overlap. In other words, because of the higher proportions of darker surfaces in these areas, the study found, Pittsburgh's redlined neighborhoods are about 5 degrees hotter than non-redlined ones.

This puts groups already vulnerable for heat illness at more risk, as a multitude of societal factors like location, income level and housing status coalesce to form a unique risk fingerprint.

Income disparities alone create burdens, especially when it comes to electricity costs, which increased in Pennsylvania starting June 1 following an announcement from the Pennsylvania Public Utility commission.

When a household pays 6% or more of its income on energy bills, it is said to be experiencing energy poverty.

Energy poverty varies across the county, but, for low-income Pittsburghers, can be as high as 18%, per a report by the American Council for Energy-Efficient Economy, which tracked rates across all American cities.

Households in McKeesport, North Braddock, McKees Rocks and Etna spend a greater portion of their income on energy, per a U.S. Department of Energy database.

Travis Renville has seen this firsthand.

The CEO of Rebuilding Together Pittsburgh, his organization offers free home repairs to certain Pittsburgh residents. Increasingly that has involved weatherizing homes to better trap heat in the winter and cool off in the summer.

"Temperature issues are occurring throughout the year now," he said. "We notice that the majority of homeowners we work with are in need of an AC and rarely have a functioning cooling system."

They work on 120 homes a year, most of which are homes of older adults and low-income and disabled Pennsylvanians.

"A lot of our low-income neighborhoods still are lacking infrastructure improvements, and it's hurting them," said Erica Cochran Hameen, an architectural designer and associate professor at Carnegie Mellon School of Architecture, specializing in building equity and sustainability.

"And with climate change and things getting warmer, when you have areas that have a lot of blacktop and don't have as many trees … they're going to be a few temperatures hotter," she said. "So if you're already hot in the summer and then you're adding to those temperatures, that's the urban heat island effect."

Summer nights have also been hotter and more humid than in the past, said Andrew Kienzle, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Pittsburgh, leaving residents ill-equipped at cooling off overnight in time for another sweltering day.

Last summer in Pittsburgh, during the week of July 24, temperatures never dropped below 70 degrees, a statistic Kienzle said is the fourth-longest stretch of all time for the region. And for 31 days straight, the temperature never dropped below 60, even at night.

"Not having that chance to cool off at night has shown to make the heat wave much worse," he said. "When you combine that with the heat-island effect, you can create sticky situations during the day. It adds a lot of heat stress on people, and if you don't have AC," that stress compounds, he said - especially if your neighborhood is 5 degrees hotter on average than, say, Highland Park.

Suzy (Zekun) Li, first author on the CMU paper, has been interested in sustainable architecture since getting her doctorate at Carnegie Mellon. The results of the study present an opportunity to increase intention around sustainable buildings and cities, she said.

"It's time for the city to invest in better surfaces," Li said.

She and her team have worked with the Washington, D.C.-based group Smart Surfaces Coalition, which gives cities sustainability tools. That might include green roofs, solar panels, porous pavement or tree planting.

Li also created the Smart Sidewalks Guide. With an increased focus on electric vehicles and subsequent demand for more charging stations in the region, the guide calls attention to other improvements the city can make while it is digging up the pavement.

"When you dig up the street and put in the charging station, there are like 13 other things that you can integrate to make our sidewalk more sustainable, cooler and reduce the flooding risk," she said. "In general, it's an integrated solution for our city."

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