Will climate change affect human health?

If you thought that the only way global warming would directly affect human health is through hot temperatures and heat waves, think again!

Rising greenhouse gas levels and global warming are triggering climate and environmental changes that will affect human health in many ways.

Climate change brings with it an increase in malnutrition, mental health conditions, infectious disease spread and even death.

Here are some insights on the health effects of climate change and global warming:

• Harm from Extreme Weather Events – Some of the first major health impact of climate change will be in the rise in rates of mortality and diseases caused by extreme weather events. These include floods, droughts, tsunamis, heat-waves and other disasters which kill thousands of people in both the developed and developing worlds. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in recent times because of Tsunamis and Heat Waves. Higher temperatures pose major health risks to older people and raise the likelihood that those who work outside – such as farmers and builders – will suffer from heat exhaustion and heat stroke. While scientific proof of climate change as the cause of extreme weather events is not yet in, anecdotal and empirical data seem to strongly point to such a cause-effect correlation.
• Malnutrition and Mental Health – Another impact of climate change on human health is more indirect, and comes as a result of climate change’s effect on human society and economic development. Experts now think that climate change is raising rates of malnutrition and mental health, for example. The impact of climate change on mental health is a relatively new field of enquiry, but it should not be underestimated. People who have survived droughts, floods, tropical storms and similar extreme weather events often lose their homes and their families.
• Poor Air Quality – Poor air quality can result in asthma and other allergens as warmer temperatures and higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere stimulate some plants to grow faster, mature earlier, or produce more potent allergens.
• Spreading Diseases – Scientists expect a warmer world to bring changes in “disease vectors”—the mechanisms that spread some diseases. Insects previously stopped by cold winters are already moving to higher latitudes (toward the poles). Warmer oceans and other surface waters may also mean severe cholera outbreaks and harmful bacteria in certain types of seafood.
  • Many killer diseases, including malaria and cholera, increase as temperature and rainfall increase. The mosquitos that carry the malaria virus, for example, thrive in hot and humid conditions – weather which climate change is likely to make more common.
  • Biodiversity loss is a well-established consequence of climate change. In a number of systems biodiversity loss is tied to greater pathogen transmission and increased human health risk.
  • It’s been known for a while that warming temperatures could help certain diseases. Malaria, which kills about 650,000 people a year, thrives in the hot and humid areas where the Anopheles mosquito can live. Already dengue fever, another mosquito-borne tropical disease, has re-established itself in the Florida Keys, where it was wiped out decades ago. In the Arctic, which is warming faster than any other region on the planet, higher temperatures are allowing parasites like the lungworm, which afflicts musk oxen, to develop faster and be transmitted over longer periods.
  • As climate change unfolds, so could the spread of waterborne infections. These infections most often cause diarrhea and flourish in the wake of heavy rainfalls and may contaminate water supplies.