Flooding in Thailand, 2009

Source: Shutterstock A new study published in the medical journal Lancet found that the consequences of climate change “threatens to undermine the last half century of gains” in global healthcare. The study was conducted by the Lancet’s Commission on Health and Climate Change, a group of more than 30 researchers from universities in the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Kenya, and Sweden. It was a follow-up study to the Commission’s 2009 report which similarly concluded that “[c]limate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” The June 22, 2015 study was titled “Health and Climate Change: Policy Responses to Protect Public Health,” and it reported that climate change results in increased storms, droughts, floods, and heatwaves, which lead to reduced water quality, increased air pollution, changes in land use, and ecological changes, which can impact public health by leading to increases in mental illness, undernutrition, allergies, cardiovascular disease, infectious diseases, injuries, respiratory diseases, and poisoning. The authors cited concerns such as changing patterns in the spread of disease, food insecurity, and displacement as also being consequences of climate change and contributing factors to rising health problems. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, between 2030 and 2050, an additional 250,000 people globally would die each year due to climate change. According to the authors, climate change could contribute to an increase in dengue fever and malaria because rising temperatures and changes in rain patterns change the area in which mosquitos carrying the diseases are found. They said instances of cholera and other waterborne disease could also rise due to increased flooding, hurricanes, and weather events such as El Niño. In the United States specifically, they wrote that the mortality rate attributed to rising ozone levels is expected to rise by 4-5% by 2050. The authors propose a “rapid phase out of coal from the global energy mix” to safeguard against an increase in cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. The authors state that a reduction in fossil fuel emissions will not only cut respiratory diseases but will also contribute to a reduction in traffic accidents and reduce rates of obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and stroke. Further, cities’ promotion of green spaces and public transportation reduce rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, mental illness, respiratory disease, cancer, and diabetes in addition to reducing urban pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. The resulting health benefits of these and other policies suggested are expected to offset the cost of the policies up to ten times by reducing health care costs and mortality rates. The authors state that the policies are “no-regret” options, meaning that the policies only have benefits in addition to the health improvements, such as reduction in poverty and addressing global inequity while strengthening the health systems and saving money on a larger scale. Lancet Commission co-chair Professor Anthony Costello said “Our analysis clearly shows that by tackling climate change we can also benefit health, and tackling climate change in fact represents one of the greatest opportunities to benefit human health for generations to come.” In contrast to the conclusions reached in the Lancet, a Mar. 31, 2014 Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) study found “no net harm to the global environment or to human health and often found the opposite: net benefits to plants, including important food crops, and to animals and human health.” That study stated, “[c]arbon dioxide fertilization has been shown to enhance certain health-promoting substances in plants, such as antioxidants, vitamin C, and fatty acids, and promote the growth of plants such as St. John’s wort used for the treatment of a variety of illnesses. In this way, global warming portends great health benefits for humans… Warmer temperatures lead to a decrease in temperature-related mortality, including deaths associated with cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and strokes.”