Heat and humidity contributed to kidney damage and disease in the San Luis Valley in Colorado between 1984 and 1998, according to our recently published work in the peer-reviewed journal Weather, Climate, and Society.

The San Luis Valley is the largest high valley desert in North America. Many of its residents work in agriculture and are exposed to worsening air quality. That decline is due to increased wildfires, dust and temperatures, in combination with low humidity. This change was in part caused by the region’s climate becoming more arid due to a 23-year drought.

I’m an environmental epidemiologist with an engineering background. For nearly two decades, I have partnered with the San Luis Valley community to investigate how water systems affect human health. Over the past eight years, my team’s research has focused on the far-reaching human health effects of the drought in the area.

In this study, we used data from a cohort of people in the San Luis Valley who were originally recruited for research........

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