"I think people think heart attacks, people think asthma. But they don't think about pregnant people," said Amy Padula, Acting Director of UCSF's Program on Reproductive Health & the Environment, about how pregnant people may be overlooked as one of the groups especially sensitive to wildfire smoke.
In June, CG reported on how school and camp closures caused by extreme weather are impacting parents, with mothers often bearing the burden of costly gaps in child care. Now, a rapid survey of more than 3,000 children across 27 Indian states and territories has found that nearly 68% of respondents say they missed classes or activities last summer because of extreme heat, according to Down to Earth.
The survey, conducted by Child Rights and You, underscores the need for schools, communities, and policymakers to strengthen the safety and climate resilience of facilities and ensure kids and adults know how to stay healthy as temperatures rise. They also highlight the growing need to support caregivers as extreme heat and shifting weather patterns become an increasingly common challenge.
CG has reported on the gendered impacts of climate-exacerbated infectious diseases, including increased caregiving and exposure amid the ongoing Ebola outbreak as well as new evidence linking global outbreaks to a "shadow pandemic" of violence against women and girls.
Last week, CG noted that the World Health Organization had launched a clinical trial in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to evaluate two potential treatments for the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. Yesterday, meanwhile, multiple outlets reported that the country's death toll has surpassed 1,000.
Over the past year, CG has been following the aftermath of last summer's tragic floods in Central Texas, where 25 campers, two teenage camp counselors, and the director of the all-girls facility Camp Mystic were killed along with over 100 other people when torrential rains caused the Guadalupe River to rise rapidly.
Texas Hill Country residents faced more deadly flooding this month. Meanwhile, officials and community members have said that some changes made to warning systems since 2025 reflected noticeable improvements.
According to Newsweek, "Residents received alerts that many didn't receive during the 2025 disaster, and local officials took more proactive steps to communicate evacuation information." Measures included flood sirens and repeated notifications via text and phone call.
However, two people died and hundreds required emergency rescue amid last month's emergency, demonstrating that warning upgrades alone will not be enough to safeguard communities from heavy rains and sudden floods.
Earlier this year, CG reported on the expansion of a Maine law to ban further items containing intentionally added per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. The consumer goods that can no longer be shipped to or sold in the state now include menstrual products, cosmetics, cleaning products, and cookware containing the "forever chemicals."
Emily Carey Perez de Alejo, Executive Director of the Maine-based watchdog group Defend Our Health, previously told CG the group hopes the broadened ban can influence product manufacturing and policy in other states.
This week, Defend Our Health launched a "searchable directory of cookware brands, their disclosure pages, and their PFAS status," according to a press release. The guide may be helpful to consumers regardless of where they live. Per the release, "anyone shopping for new pots and pans, coffee machines, air fryers, or muffin tins can look up the brand they're considering and quickly check if a product contains PFAS."
Exposure to certain levels of the synthetic chemicals has been linked to serious health conditions, including cancers and reproductive health concerns.
As wildfires in North America and Europe spark concerns for those especially sensitive to air pollution, some researchers want to ensure that pregnant people aren't overlooked.
"I think they're often a forgotten population when it comes to air pollution in general," said Amy Padula, a professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, and the Acting Director of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment.
"I think people think heart attacks, people think asthma. But they don't think about pregnant people."
That may be true at a public communications level, with air pollution alerts often highlighting health risks for children, older adults, and those with heart or lung disease. But researchers are exploring a range of ways in which exposure to wildfire smoke may affect fertility, pregnant people, and pregnancy outcomes. Read more...
This digest was curated and reported by Gracie Leavitt. It was written and edited by Gracie Leavitt and Kirsten Krueger.
One goal at Climate, Gendered is to bring a spotlight to the reality that proliferating pollution, increasing temperatures, rising seas, extreme weather, habitat loss, and more can uniquely and disproportionately impact girls, women, trans communities, and nonbinary people — especially those from communities of color, Indigenous people, disabled people, immigrants and displaced people, people experiencing poverty, and residents of low- and middle-income countries. We're also interested in the climate crises and concerns that can disproportionately affect men and boys.
This work cannot be done alone or in silos. We appreciate your feedback and observations. And please feel encouraged to share one way you noticed this week that climate and gender connect — and share CG with a friend.
"Being a queer [or] trans activist and an environmental activist puts you in a greater sense of danger because both agendas are heavily under attack," Diego De Leon, Advocacy Chair at Out for Sustainability, told CG.
"While every family is different, mothers are disproportionately the default parent, meaning climate disruptions can add to the mental load, logistical challenges, and economic pressures many women already face," Laura Schifter, a Senior Fellow at the D.C.-based Aspen Institute, told CG.
"Incineration inevitably has an impact on the environment," Selma Benkhelifa of Progress Lawyers Network told CG about the U.S. government's previous plan to burn a cache of contraceptives instead of distributing them. "But the worst thing is depriving millions of women of access to contraception."
"This research project would not have happened had we not had buy-in and trust from the farmers we worked with," Emily Selland told CG about an effort in Senegal that showed integration of native fish into watery rice fields might curb schistosomiasis risks, which may be affected by climate shifts.
