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Climate Change Impacts on Health: Heat Waves, Flooding, Famine, and Disease

This text highlights the effects of climate change on human health, including increased mortality during heat waves, the adaptability of humans to heat, the impact of flooding and drought on morbidity, the effects of climate change on food safety and water supply, and the spread of vector-borne diseases like malaria. It also discusses future vulnerability to climate change and the socioeconomic factors that contribute to it.

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Climate Change Impacts on Health: Heat Waves, Flooding, Famine, and Disease

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  1. Outline • Background • Human energy balance • Strategies to temperature changes • Morbidity • Heat Waves • Flooding • Famine • Disease • Malaria

  2. How climate change affects health IPCC (2007) Working Group 2 Report

  3. Heat Waves • Associated with short-term increases in mortality • Have been increasing in frequency • Mortality displacement is a factor • People close to death will die sooner in a heat wave • Drop off in deaths after the heat wave

  4. Human Adaptability to Heat • Humans maintain near constant core temperature through various adaptive strategies: • Physiological (sweating) • Acclimatization (adjustment to new conditions over time) • Alteration of food intake • Changing when you do things • Migration • Clothing • Use energy for A/C or heating

  5. Human Energy Balance • Storage change = 0 over time to maintain temperature balance Longwave Radiation Evaporation Metabolic Rate Convection Storage Incoming shortwave

  6. Clothing Impact • The “private climate” • Quantified by estimating the resistance to thermal transfer: Incoming short wave Body Area Air Temp. Body Temp. Dry Heat Flux = 6.6+8.7(wind speed)0.5 Metabolic Rate

  7. Simplified Clothing Index

  8. Acclimatization • Evidence that some populations have become less sensitive to temperature extremes • USA (1964-1988) • South Carolina (since 1970s) • Physiological responses include: • More efficient heat loss through sweat • Readjustment of temperature preference toward the extreme values • Leads to less discomfort, better work performance, sense of better well being

  9. Flooding and Health Effects • Large numbers of fatalities from the events themselves • Bangladesh • Post-event impacts • Digestive diseases • Chemical contamination (e.g. Katrina) • Mental disorders (anxiety, depression) • Higher impacts on poor • More live in flood prone areas

  10. Drought • Diminishes diversity in diet and reduces overall food consumption • Malnutrition • Increases risk of acquiring and dying from infectious disease • May cause mass migration (rural to urban) • Increase in communicable disease

  11. Climate Model Projections

  12. Food Safety • Studies have shown a linear increase in food poisoning with increase in temperature • Higher temperatures increase contact between food and pests (flies, cockroaches, rodents) • More ocean toxins (Harmful Algal Blooms) contaminate shellfish

  13. Water Supply • Water access already a global concern • 2 billion + do not have access to clean water • Leads to disease, malnutrition, infant mortality

  14. Water Supply • Climate extremes (projected to increase) stress water supply systems • Lower river flows increases pathogen proportion • Extreme rain/runoff events may increase water borne disease • Curriero et al. 2001

  15. Vector Borne Diseases • Transmitted through bites • Mosquitoes, ticks, bugs, some flies • Tick populations have shifted north (Sweden, Canada) and up (Czech Republic) • Evidence of earlier arrival of mosquitoes

  16. Malaria • 515 million cases each year in tropics and subtropics • 1-3 million deaths • Conflicting results on malaria trends and how they relate to climate • Some evidence that high minimum temperatures in preceding months mean more malaria (Ethiopia)

  17. Future Vulnerability to Climate Change • Factors • Existing burden of disease and disability • Aging of the population • Population explosion • From 6.4 bil to 9 bil by mid-21st century • Highest in poor countries • Urbanization • Heat island effect, more efficient disease transfer • Socio-economic • Rich get richer, poor get poorer

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