How Breathing Toxic Air in Phoenix Left Cancer Patient with Fractured Spine: 'The Coughing Wouldn't Stop'

"It just kept getting worse instead of getting better," Hazel Chandler, a field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, tells PEOPLE

Last July, after days of bad air quality alerts, Hazel Chandler started coughing. The great-grandmother ended up coughing so hard she had to have emergency spinal surgery.

“The coughing wouldn’t stop,” Chandler, 77, of Phoenix, Ariz., tells PEOPLE in this week's issue. "It just kept getting worse instead of getting better.“

Chandler has asthma, allergies and Stage 4 breast cancer that has metastasized to her bones. She has been living with cancer for more than 11 years now.

“I ended up with 12 compression fractures of my spine, which doctors said was weakened by cancer. But the fractures were caused by coughing because of the poor air quality," she says.

Related: When Summer Weather Turns Deadly: ‘It Was Like a Biblical Event,’ Says Man Whose Parents Died in Flooding

In October, she had an emergency spinal fusion surgery to stabilize her spine.

Chandler is now a field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, helping to raise awareness about the health dangers of climate change, extreme heat and bad air quality.

“It just keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter," says Chandler.  “It's like somebody turned the heat up and it's been above 110 for days.”

For more on extreme weather, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribe here.

The heat in Phoenix is extremely dangerous this summer, says climate expert, Michael Mann.

“The heat that we're experiencing is literally deadly. It's too hot for human beings,” says Mann, a University of Pennsylvania professor and author of the upcoming book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis. “In Phoenix, a child who walks barefoot on the street can get second or third degree burns.”

Related: Hiker Who Died in Death Valley Spoke to Reporter About Risking Extreme Heat Hours Earlier: 'Why Not?'

The record-breaking extreme weather this year is a direct result of climate change, says Michael Wehner, senior scientist in the applied mathematics and computational research department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

“If it hadn't been for climate change it would probably be another hot year, but not as hot as it actually is,” Wehner says. “Climate change makes most of these extreme events worse. It's quite blatantly obvious with the unusual weather from the strange winter we had, to this very hot and stormy summer.”

Related: Man Found Dead in Car with 2 Flat Tires and Broken AC at Death Valley National Park amid Extreme Heat

Wehner has been vocal about climate change for the past 10 years.

“We won't have a normal until we stop climate change getting worse. There's no going back,” he says. “And 30 years from now, it's going to be even worse. I'm not surprised, but I'm shocked and disappointed and sometimes even angry that we haven't done enough, because this is something we've known about for 20 years.”

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