Climate Change and Public Health Fall 2002

Environmental Health has evolved from late 19^th c. focus on sanitation/contagion to growing attention to morbidity/mortality from “diseases of affluence and industry”

(ex. cancer from toxic exposures).

And now the challenges of CC…. a mix of communicable diseases (tuberculosis), vector-borne (malaria, dengue, West Nile virus), water-borne diseases (cholera),

along with the diseases of modernity/industry/affluence,

not to mention biological/chemical/radiological weapons.

Public Health system is struggling with shifting, complex demands and serious strains of budget, resource, training and development. Environmental Health particularly challenged: limited preparation in Medical Schools, often highly litigious/politicized, demands extensive skill in diagnostics, site assessment, treatment (individual to system), hampered by barriers to full information (trade secrets, industrial/agricultural processes).

Environmental Health practitioners and advocates attend to a range of concerns:

Individual vulnerabilities…. ex., multiple chemical sensitivity

Site specific “hot spots”…..building design (“sick building syndrome”),

at-risk neighborhoods/communities (Love Canal, Times Beach, Minamata Bay), production processes (lead in gasoline, asbestos in shipbuilding, arsenic at smelters),

regional life-support systems (water/air/soil pollutants),

biodiversity/habitat impacts on other species, foodsystems

and planetary health (CC, ozone depletion/UV radiation, war, environmental refugees).

Resources: New Solutions: A Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health Policy;

American Public Health Association; Environmental Health Movement (such as Center for Health, Environment & Justice www.chej.org and EH risk tracking at www.scorecard.org ); Science & Environmental Health Network www.sehn.org ;

US Govt… National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences www.niehs.nih.gov ; World Health Organization at the UN

Focusing on Climate Change from NIEHS’s Environmental Health Perspectives

1994, Global Climate Change Initiative. Including broad impacts (flooding, droughts, disease patterns, etc.) , plus toxicology of new treatments/drugs for new, relocated pests and diseases and assessment of CC “cures” such as alternative fuels, solar panel constituents.

1998, research on spread of Dengue Fever into temperate regions. Has reemerged in Latin America, especially in urban areas. Inhabitants in border regions may lack immunity. Virus incubation period is shortened at higher temperatures. “Shortening the incubation period by 5 days can mean a potential 3-fold higher transmission rate of disease.” (NIEHS release 3/9/98)

1999, international team of climate experts, health officials, meterology agencies, UNEP working to develop “heat health watch” .. to provide health officials with advance warning of heat dangers. Examining special problems for those not acclimatized to heat, ex., more problems expected in Phila than Miami. Children, seniors among the high risk.

2001 “Hot New Report on Climate Change,” NIEHS reports on January 2001 meeting in China with US, IPPC. Science, policy, public health management center stage.

2001 (August), “The Soot Factor” , with soot (blackened, unburned carbon) reported on as major concern. Incomplete combustion of fossil fuels and biomass burning as sources.

2002 (October), “Global Warming Prolongs Sneezin Season,” reporting impact of GHG on asthma. “Plants produce more pollen when grown under high levels of carbon dioxide, which is the mail fuel of photosynthesis.”

Other sources:

“Climate Change and Human Health Integrated Assessment Web” , John Hopkins Public Health School, www.jhu.edu/~climate From Remote Sensing to Hydrologic Modeling.

Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, Eric Klinenberg, U Chicago, 2002.

“Global Warming: The Hidden Health Risk,” Scientific American, August 2000.

(malaria, west nile virus, hantavirus, dengue, cholera)

Planetary Overload: Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species, AJ McMichael (Austrialian epidemiologist), Cambridge Univ Press, 93. Examines interaction of CC and Ozone Depletion (UV radiation exposure may be immune suppressant, heightening risk to infectious, communicable diseases of CC and exposure to pesticides used to deal with vector-borne diseases).

Physicians for Social Responsibility, key organization for connecting health to CC, promoting public health as part of mitigation, bringing health providers to the public. Critical Condition: Human Health & the Environment (93) and in 2002, Life Support: The Environment & Human Health, Michael McCally, PhD, MD, Portland OR.

Some questions to consider re: PSR Death by Degrees: Health Threats of CC in WA

Building on your interpretation of the report’s contents, how do you think such a document will likely impact the public? Put another way, how should/could such a report be applied for the public good? How does it advance public understanding of the broader CC situation? How does the report work as a blending of science/policy/education? In the Oct/Nov 02 PSR “Activist Update” people are urged to “tell your Members of Congress about the dangers of CC in your state.” How might PSR (members/supporters) impact CC policy and politics (at international, national or state levels?)