As the busiest shoreline hubs in the Western Hemisphere, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach also endure heightened and highly concentrated air pollution levels, according to two new reports led by the University of California Berkeley.  

The California Air Resources Board estimated that cargo activities in this region — collectively called the San Pedro Bay ports — have caused about 67 premature deaths and more than 2,000 lower respiratory injuries per year, the authors noted.  

California ports in general are responsible for about 40 percent of container imports into the U.S. and 30 percent of such exports, per the research, conducted by Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy and Energy & Environmental Research Associates.   

The reports, commissioned by the nonprofit Pacific Environment, aim to both advise policymakers as to how they might decrease the emissions in the maritime sector and provide technical evaluations of such decarbonization efforts. 

“The federal and state governments, including California, need to accelerate efforts to transition ships and ports toward a zero-emission future,” David Wooley, director of the Environmental Center at Goldman, said in a statement. 

“We call on California to gradually transition ships operating in its waters to zero or near zero emission fuels,” Wooley added. 

Crediting the Golden State for its pioneering role in requiring less sulfur in fuels and emissions controls aboard ships, the reports urged officials to signal their intent to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. 

They could do so by adopting incentives or requirements for zero-carbon fuels in ships that operate in California’s waters, if international progress on this issue fails to materialize, per the research.  

The authors stressed that while a transition to zero-carbon fuels for shipping “will not be easy,” they believe that “there are clear near-term technical and policy options to significantly reduce emissions.” 

Such steps, they explained, could “lay the foundation for a fully decarbonized industry by 2040.”  

Welcome to The Hill’s Sustainability newsletter, I’m Sharon Udasin — every week we follow the latest moves in the growing battle over sustainability in the U.S. and around the world.

Both extreme heat and cold are associated with heightened risks of death from stroke, a new study has found.  

That link was stronger in low-income than in high-income studies, according to the study, published on Wednesday in Stroke. 

Extreme effects: The connection between temperature extremes and stroke fatalities, the authors noted, applies to both of the two main types of stroke: Ischemic and hemorrhagic.  

• Ischemic strokes — 87 percent of all strokes — are those caused by a blood vessel blockage, per Johns Hopkins Medicine.
• Hemorrhagic strokes are those caused by bleeding.  

Bearing the brunt: With temperature spikes could come not only a rise in such deaths but also “a widening disparity in stroke mortality between high- and low-income countries,” lead author Barrak Alahmad, an environmental health researcher at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said in a statement. 

That discrepancy, he explained, is due to the fact that “the latter are likely to bear the brunt of climate change.” 

An international issue: To evaluate the potential link between extreme temperatures and strokes through a global lens, the researchers built a multinational database by harnessing information available through a global environmental health consortium. 

• The database included more than 3.4 million ischemic and more than 2.4 million hemorrhagic stroke deaths.
• The deaths were reported between 1979 and 2019 across 522 cities in 25 countries.     

Deadly heat and cold: The authors found that for every 1,000 total stroke deaths, about 11 were attributable to extreme heat or cold.  

• Of those, the hottest and coldest 2.5 percent of the days were responsible for 2.2 and 9.1 excess deaths, respectively.
• Out of every 1,000 hemorrhagic strokes, the hottest and coldest 2.5 percent of the days were to blame for 0.7 and 11.2 excess deaths. 

Heat and hemorrhage: Low-income countries bore a greater burden of heat-related hemorrhagic stroke deaths, according to the study.  

• Such nations might also be enduring more cold-related hemorrhagic stroke deaths, but the evidence was suggestive, rather than conclusive.
• The authors did not find any such link with respect to ischemic stroke deaths.    

Closing the gap: The differences may be related to the availability of indoor temperature control systems and lower rates of outdoor work in higher-income countries, the authors explained.  

As climate change continues to intensify temperature extremes, the researchers called for further research and interventional strategies to help mitigate stroke-related fatalities — particularly in low-income countries.