PORTLAND, Ore. (KTVZ) — The Oregon Health Authority is providing tips on staying protected and wholesome as folks head out for household gatherings, tenting journeys and different out of doors actions throughout the Fourth of July vacation.
“Here in Oregon, summer doesn’t really kick off until Independence Day, when we finally start seeing those regular stretches of sunny weather,” mentioned Dean Sidelinger, MD, MSEd, well being officer and state epidemiologist at OHA. “But with those long, hot days comes health hazards people should be aware of, and take steps to protect themselves.”
When summertime arrives, many individuals in Oregon head to lakes, rivers and seashores to chill off and recreate. There will be well being dangers associated to summer time enjoyable similar to dangerous algal blooms at lakes, unpredictably chilly water at rivers that may result in hypothermia, and fecal micro organism at seashores. People tenting and having fun with different out of doors actions can typically encounter mosquitoes, ticks, bats and different wildlife that may carry illnesses, and picnics with unrefrigerated meals will be sources of foodborne diseases.
There are also local weather change-related summer time dangers, similar to excessive warmth and smoke from wildfires. And summertime actions might put some folks in danger for extreme alcohol use or misuse of prescription ache killers or illicit opioids.
“Summer doesn’t have to be a bummer,” Sidelinger mentioned. “All that’s required is simple preparation and a little bit of common sense.”
Here are hyperlinks to tips for staying protected from summer time’s widespread well being dangers:
- Drowning prevention: Oregon’s lakes, river and seashores – to not point out yard and group swimming swimming pools – are nice locations to chill off and benefit from the water when the climate turns heat, however doing so means being aware of how to remain protected and forestall drownings and different accidents.
- Avoid alcohol when swimming or boating.
- Enter water ft first to scale back your threat of head and spinal damage, and paralysis.
- Young and weaker swimmers ought to put on U.S. Coast Guard-approved private floatation machine (PFD) or life jacket for swimming and boating; by no means use swimming aids similar to water wings, noodles or different water toys rather than a life jacket.
- Swim with another person and keep away from swimming in unhealthy climate.
- Supervise youngsters always in and close to the water.
- Drink numerous water to remain hydrated.
- Take the time to study CPR at your native hospital, hearth division or recreation division.
- Visit Safe Kids Worldwide’s swimming security website.
- Wildfires, wildfire smoke: Gases and advantageous particles from burning timber and different plant materials will be harmful if inhaled. Carbon monoxide is principally a threat to folks (like wildland firefighters) who work close to smoldering areas. Smoke can irritate your eyes and respiratory system, and worsen power coronary heart and lung illnesses. The quantity and size of smoke publicity, in addition to an individual’s age and well being situations, play a job in figuring out if somebody will expertise smoke-related well being issues.
- Avoid vigorous out of doors exercise when wildfire smoke is within the air.
- Stay indoors as a lot as potential and create cleaner air areas.
- If you could have a central air system, buy and set up a MERV-13 or higher filter earlier than wildfire season set your system to recycle or recirculate the air.
- No central air-con? Create a cleaner air house in a minimum of one room in your house by buying an air filtration device or constructing your individual do-it-yourself device with a field fan and HVAC filters. Don’t wait till smoke is close to and shops are out of followers and filters.
- When driving, run your automobile’s air conditioner on the recirculate setting.
- Reduce different sources of indoor smoke and mud. These will be burning cigarettes, candles, fuel, propane, and wood-burning stoves and furnaces, and vacuuming.
- Visit OregonSmoke.org (Spanish web site: OregonHumo.org) to seek out the present air high quality.
- If you could have coronary heart or lung illness or respiratory diseases similar to bronchial asthma, comply with your well being care supplier’s recommendation about prevention and therapy of signs.
- Stay hydrated. Drink loads of water.
- Visit OHA’s Wildfires and Smoke website.
- Mosquitoes: West Nile virus (WNV) is carried by mosquitoes and may infect people, horses, and birds. Humans can solely get the virus from the chunk of an contaminated mosquito; the illness doesn’t unfold from different animals to people, or from individual to individual. Most infections are gentle, with fever and flu-like signs, however extreme infections might trigger encephalitis (irritation of the mind), and infrequently, loss of life.
- Eliminate sources of standing water which might be a breeding floor for mosquitoes, together with watering troughs, chicken baths, decorative ponds, buckets, wading and swimming swimming pools not in use, and outdated tires.
- Protect your self through the use of mosquito repellants containing DEET, oil of lemon eucalyptus or Picardin, and comply with the instructions on the container.
- Wear long-sleeved shirts and lengthy pants in mosquito-infested areas.
- Make positive display doorways and home windows are in good restore and match tightly.
- Visit OHA’s West Nile Virus Prevention and Education website.
- Ticks: Oregon is dwelling to a minimum of three species of ticks. East of the Cascades, the most typical is the Rocky Mountain wooden tick, which transmits Colorado tick fever, in addition to Rocky Mountain noticed fever and tularemia. West of the Cascades, there’s the brown canine tick, which additionally spreads Rocky Mountain noticed fever; and the blacklegged tick or deer tick, which carries Lyme illness, anaplasmosis, an rising an infection referred to as Borrelia miyamotoi, and several other different illnesses.
- Avoid tick-prone areas similar to brushy or wooded areas with excessive grass and leaf litter throughout the peak time of yr—late March to mid-October.
- Wear tick repellent that comprises permethrin or DEET. A 2018 examine revealed within the Journal of Medical Entomology discovered that permethrin-treated clothes can forestall tick bites by disrupting the insect’s regular motion.
- Wear long-sleeved shirts, lengthy pants and closed-toed sneakers, and tuck pant legs into the tops of socks or boots.
- Wear light-colored garments to make it simpler to identify ticks.
- Frequently examine your clothes, gear and pets for ticks, and take away them promptly.
- After you get dwelling, examine your physique for ticks, together with below the arms, in and across the ears, inside your stomach button, on the backs of your knees, in and round your head, between your legs and across the waist.
- Visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Ticks website.
- Cyanobacteria (dangerous algal) blooms in lakes, reservoirs and rivers: Symptoms of publicity to cyanotoxins embrace diarrhea, cramps, vomiting, numbness, dizziness and fainting. Although cyanotoxins are usually not absorbed via the pores and skin, folks with delicate pores and skin can develop a crimson, raised rash when wading, enjoying, or swimming in or round a bloom.
- Stay out of water that appears foamy, scummy, thick like pea-green or blue-green paint, or the place brownish-red mats are current, and hold pets away, too.
- Avoid high-speed water actions, similar to water snowboarding or energy boating, in areas of the lake the place blooms are, as the main route of publicity is ingestion of water.
- If you’re uncertain, comply with OHA’s steering of “When in doubt, stay out.”
- Toxins are usually not absorbed via the pores and skin, however these with pores and skin sensitivities might expertise a puffy crimson rash after publicity to water the place there’s a bloom.
- Water actions similar to fishing, tenting, climbing, biking, picnicking, and chicken watching can nonetheless be loved when an algal bloom advisory is in impact. Boating is protected so long as speeds don’t create extreme water spray that may result in a threat of inhaling cyanotoxins.
- Visit OHA’s Cyanobacteria (Harmful Algae) Blooms website.
- Beach micro organism: Unsafe ranges of fecal micro organism may cause diarrhea, abdomen cramps, pores and skin rashes, higher respiratory infections, and different diseases. Children, aged and people with a compromised immune system ought to use further warning as they’re extra susceptible to sickness from waterborne micro organism.
- When an OHA beach advisory is in impact, the seaside remains to be open to the general public. The advisory is to tell guests to keep away from wading in close by creeks, swimming pools of water on the seaside, or in discolored water.
- Avoid any actions throughout which you may swallow water, similar to swimming, browsing, diving and kayaking.
- Stay away from water runoff flowing into the ocean. Levels of fecal micro organism are typically increased in a lot of these water sources.
- Wash your fingers completely earlier than consuming if enjoying in or round water that has above regular micro organism ranges.
- Keep pets out of the water throughout an advisory to forestall them from ingesting the water.
- Avoid swimming within the ocean inside 48 hours after a rainstorm even when there is no such thing as a advisory in impact.
- Visit OHA’s Monitoring Beach Water Quality website.
- Rabies: Bats and different small animals, similar to foxes, play a useful position in nature, however they’ll carry rabies. This viral illness of mammals assaults an contaminated animal’s nervous system. Typically, different animals purchase rabies by consuming or coming involved with a rabid bat.
- Stay away from bats and don’t deal with them.
- If you discover a sick bat or different sick wildlife, contact your native Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) workplace. Take youngsters and pets indoors and don’t deal with the bat or animal with out safety.
- Use a disposable container with a lid to scoop a lifeless animal into the containers and get rid of it within the trash.
- If a bat has had contact with a human or an animal, name your well being division or animal companies for steering.
- Vaccinate pets (canine and cats) towards rabies.
- Watch wildlife from a distance. Don’t strategy or try and deal with wild animals.
- Do not feed wild animals.
- Keep rubbish in safe containers and away from wildlife.
- Feed pets indoors.
- Seal openings in attics, basements, porches, sheds, barns and display chimneys that may present entry to bats and different wildlife.
- Visit OHA’s Bats and Rabies website.
- Foodborne diseases: Warmer climate makes it simpler for meals to spoil. Cooking meats to a correct inside temperature, and retaining sizzling meals cold and warm meals cool helps scale back foodborne micro organism from rising.
- Be positive to scrub your fingers earlier than and after cooking, and after dealing with fish and meats.
- Keep meat and poultry refrigerated till prepared to make use of.
- Don’t depart meals out for greater than two to a few hours.
- To forestall foodborne sickness, do not use the identical platter and utensils for uncooked and cooked meat and poultry.
- Cook meats to minimal inside temperature to destroy dangerous micro organism; 145 °F for beef, pork, veal and lamb (roast, steak and chops); 160 °F for floor meats; 165 °F for poultry.
- Visit OHA’s Food Safety for the Public website.
- Extreme warmth: Excessive warmth situations can enhance the chance of heat-related diseases that may result in warmth exhaustion and warmth stroke. These excessive temperatures can critically have an effect on the well being of the aged, those that work or train outdoor, infants and kids, the homeless or poor, and folks with a power medical situation.
- Stay cool
- Stay in air-conditioned locations when temperatures are excessive, if potential.
- Limit out of doors publicity to the solar between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. when UV rays are strongest, and keep away from direct daylight. Try to schedule out of doors actions within the morning and night.
- While it’s cool, open home windows to permit recent air to flow into, particularly throughout morning and night hours, and shut shades on west-facing home windows throughout the afternoon hours.
- Use moveable electrical followers to exhaust sizzling air from rooms or attract cooler air to assist scale back indoor temperatures.
- Wear loose-fitting, light-weight, light-colored clothes to maintain cool and defend your pores and skin from the solar, and costume infants and kids the identical manner.
- Use cool compresses, misting, and funky showers and baths to decrease your physique temperature.
- Avoid sizzling meals and heavy meals; they add warmth to the physique.
- Avoid alcohol or liquids containing excessive quantities of sugar.
- Never depart infants or youngsters in a parked automobile. Nor ought to pets be left in parked vehicles—they’ll undergo heat-related sickness, too.
- Avoid sunburns. Use sunscreen with a minimum of SPF 15 when going outdoors.
- Check on at-risk mates, household and neighbors a minimum of twice a day.
- Stay hydrated
- Make positive your loved ones, mates and neighbors are ingesting sufficient water.
- Regardless of your degree of exercise, drink loads of fluids, even if you’re not thirsty and particularly when working outdoors.
- Avoid alcohol or liquids containing massive quantities of sugar.
- Stay knowledgeable
- Stay up to date on the temperature and warmth index when planning your actions so yow will discover methods to remain cool and hydrated. The warmth index measures how sizzling it feels outdoors when factoring in humidity with the precise air temperature.
- Learn easy methods to forestall, acknowledge, and deal with heat-related illnesses.
- Visit OHA’s Extreme Heat website.
- Stay cool
- Alcohol, opioid misuse: Substance use, together with extreme alcohol use and opioid misuse, is usually a downside as folks collect for summer time actions.
- When utilizing alcohol:
- Don’t drink and drive a automobile or boat. Plan for various rides or designated drivers.
- Set limits. Decide what number of days every week you propose to drink and what number of drinks you propose to have. For occasion, you may determine to solely drink on a Friday night time or Saturday night time and have one drink. Schedule alcohol-free days each week. Create a plan with this interactive screening tool.
- Count your drinks. Use an app in your cell machine to assist. Understanding how a lot alcohol counts as a “standard” drink can also assist.
- Manage your “triggers,” similar to sure folks, locations or actions that tempt you to drink greater than you deliberate. For instance, as a substitute of a contented hour occasion with co-workers, counsel catching up at lunch as a substitute. You can also wish to take away sure alcohol merchandise from your private home.
- Find help. Ask for help from a buddy, member of the family, well being care supplier, or another person who will help your option to drink much less. Call 1-800-923-4357 at no cost confidential help.
- If you or somebody you already know makes use of prescription or illicit opioids:
- Don’t use alone and all the time have naloxone readily available. Naloxone is an easy-to-use, life-saving drug that may reverse the results of an opioid overdose when administered in time.
- Stagger your illicit drug use; don’t use unexpectedly in case there may be fentanyl in your medicine and folks fall into overdose.
- Unless a pharmacist instantly fingers you a prescription capsule, assume that it’s counterfeit and comprises fentanyl.
- If you’re in therapy for substance use, ask your counselor for assist getting naloxone. You may get naloxone without charge from a neighborhood program.
- If you wish to have naloxone readily available for another person, ask your pharmacist for a prescription.
- If you’re actively utilizing opioids and concerned with a syringe trade or different harm-reduction companies, you may get naloxone without charge.
- If you think somebody is overdosing, name 911 instantly. Oregon’s Good Samaritan legislation will defend you towards felony expenses.
- Visit CDC’s Drink Less, Be Your Best website or see OHA’s Administering Naloxone During COVID-19 fact sheet. Also go to the Never Use Alone website
- When utilizing alcohol: