Climate change and your health             

            Could climate change, formerly referred to as global warming, have an effect on human health? Pessimistic pundits predict negative consequences but whether the earth is warming or cooling there are advantages as well as disadvantages and some of these affect human health.

            One of the greatest fears is that the rise in global temperature will allow an increase in the range of disease-carrying mosquitoes and other pests. Malaria, a parasite disease that is spread by mosquitoes, kills several hundred thousand persons every year, mostly children. If the mosquito population were to invade higher latitudes and loftier elevations, millions more persons could be at risk. That isn’t happening. In spite of the measured increase in global temperatures over the last century, both the incidence of malaria as well as the geographic extent of the parasite are actually decreasing. Effective mosquito control measures may have blunted the climate effect. If current efforts to develop a malaria vaccine are successful the effect of climate change will be a non-issue.

            The conditions that are responsible for global warming include the increased formation of carbon dioxide and the spewing into the atmosphere of countless industrial chemicals. The degree to which human activity contributes to global warming remains controversial but there is no dispute about the effect of air pollution. Sometimes it’s obvious, as in smog-shrouded cities in China. Even where it is not visible it contributes heavily to the significant increase in lung disorders, especially childhood asthma that has been occurring over the past few decades.

            Increasing temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide do have some beneficial effects. They favor plant growth where rainfall is adequate. Lengthening of the growing season at more northern latitudes has clear economic advantages. Greenland may regain the climatic conditions that inspired Nordic seafarers to give it a name that seems incongruous today. Increased crop yields in Canada and Northern Europe could make farm products more available, obviously a beneficial situation. 

To keep things in perspective, note that lifestyle-related chronic diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease and stroke will destroy far more lives than the viruses whose range might be expanded by rising carbon dioxide levels. The campaign to reduce industrial emissions is only part of the problem. A cooler, cleaner planet, two-thirds of whose population is obese and diabetic, would hardly be a paradise.