More infectious diseases, excess heat, respiratory problems… this is the impact of the climate crisis on health

2023-11-15 01:30:00
Health Global warming accelerates the transmission of infections such as dengue and West Nile virus

Heat waves, drought, continued exposure to polluted air… the imprint of the climate crisis on our body is already palpable. Almost half a million deaths are due to particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions associated with the transportation industry. Almost two million deaths annually in the world result directly from exposure to polluted outdoor air. Heat-related mortality in people over 65 years of age increased by 85% between 2013 and 2022.

These are figures that appear in the ‘iceberg’ that contains all the consequences of climate change. Some sequels included in the eighth edition of the Countdown on Health and Climate Changewhich publishes the magazine The Lancet. “Our health analysis reveals that today the growing threats of climate change are claiming lives and affecting people’s livelihoods around the world,” emphasizes Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown at University College London.

The future that experts paint is not at all hopeful: the world is on track to reach 2.7C warming by 2100 and energy-related emissions will reach a new record in 2022, the lives of current and future generations hang in the balance. thread. “With an emission of 1,337 tons of carbon dioxide per second, we are not even close to reducing emissions quickly enough to keep climate dangers within tolerable levels for our health systems,” insists Romanello.

Throughout 2022, people were exposed, on average, to 86 of extreme temperatures that posed a risk to their health, of which andl 60% were at least twice as likely to occur due to climate change caused by people.

What does the Lancet Countdown report reflect?

The eighth Lancet Countdown report is the collaborative work of 114 leading experts from 52 research institutions and UN agencies around the world, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). The report is led by University College London and presents the most up-to-date analysis of the link between health and climate change.

The Lancet Countdown data is published on the eve of the 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP) and presents 47 indicators including new metrics and improved systems that track household air pollution, funding for the fossil fuel industry, and the participation of international organizations in the health benefits of climate mitigation.

The authors of the report denounce the “negligence” of governments, companies and banks that continue to invest in the oil and gas industry, while the challenges and costs of adaptation increase and the damage caused to the planet approaches a point of no return. They warn that, without the implementation of strong mitigation measures and rapid efforts to address the underlying causes of climate change, the health of humanity is at serious risk.

“The projections of a planet with a 2C temperature increase they tell us about a fdangerous future“, and are a macabre reminder that the pace and scale of mitigation efforts we have seen so far have been woefully inadequate to safeguard people’s health and safety,” Romanello says.

Spanish contribution to the report

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) stands out as one of the leading institutes in contributing to the Lancet Countdown reports. Multiple members of the Global Health Resilience team contributed to this report, including Dr. Kim van Daalen (Research Fellow of the Lancet Countdown in Europe), Martín Lotto Batista (author of the malaria indicator), and ICREA professor Rachel Lowe ( director of the Lancet Countdown in Europe).

From the BSC-CNS they explain that “for this year’s report, we generated projections until the year 2100, using two climate change scenarios. Our results reveal a clear trend of increasing conditions conducive to malaria transmission, “especially in high altitude areas, such as the highlands of Ethiopia in Africa or the Andes in South America.”

Furthermore, they add that “when projecting into the future, we observe a shift of these conditions towards the poles as temperatures rise and precipitation patterns undergo changes. In addition, our team contributes to the critical analysis of the differential impacts between various regions of the world”.

Although the Lancet Countdown reports are global, these experts announce that in April 2024 they will publish specific data for the European region. “Last year we published a specific report on Europe for the first time,” they recall.

So, “we point out that The impact of climate change on health is uneven between regions. For example, southern Europe tends to suffer more from diseases associated with heat waves, forest fires and droughts. Next April, we will publish an update of these results, expanding our monitoring to other health impacts, such as tick-borne diseases and leishmaniasis, among others.

What are the most important traces?

In 2023, the planet experienced the highest global temperatures in the last 100,000 years, with all continents breaking their temperature records. All over the world, people were exposed to deadly dangers. And these changes in the climatic pattern lead to more pathologies.

Some have heat as the cause. With the current average global warming of 1.14C over the past decade, people experienced an average of 86 days of health-damaging temperature extremes in the period 2018-2022. Of these days, more than 60% were at least twice as likely to occur due to human-caused climate change.

Heat-related mortality in people over 65 years of age increased by 85% between 2013 and 2022, compared to the period from 1991-2000. This number is well above the 38% increase projected if there were no temperature change (i.e., taking into account only demographic changes).

More frequent heat waves and droughts were associated with 127 million more people who declared food insecurity moderate to severe in 122 countries in 2021, compared to what occurred annually between 1981 and 2010. This means that around 525 million people would be affected between 2041-2060, exacerbating the risk of malnutrition worldwide. global.

A health worker mixes fumigation chemicals during a campaign to combat mosquitoes that transmit dengue. EBRAHIM HAMIDAFP

“In Europaas at a global level, we observe an increase in the negative impacts of climate change in human health. This is reflected in an increase in deaths from heat waves, greater exposure to extreme events and changes in the conditions for the transmission of diseases. infectious diseases such as West Nile fever and Vibrio“, they explain from the BSC-CNS.

Regarding this bacteria, the change in climate patterns is accelerating the transmission of deadly infectious diseases. For example, rising ocean temperatures have made the planet’s coastal area conducive to spread of Vibrio, which can cause illness and even death in humans, has increased by 329 km every year since 1982. This puts a record number at risk: 1.4 billion people could suffer from diarrhea, severe wound infections and sepsis. In the case of dengueits transmission potential will increase by 37%which would result in rapid global spread.

Others havepollution as origin. Changing the way we get around and instead offering active, public, electric and accessible alternatives could prevent many of the 460,000 annual deaths caused by diesel particulate emissions.

However, there is one fact that invites hope. This year’s report reveals that deaths associated with air pollution derived from fossil fuels have decreased almost 17% since 2005with 80% of this decrease being the result of efforts to reduce pollution derived from the burning of coal.

What is the economic impact of all health expenses?

A shocking fact is that the total value of economic losses associated with extreme climate events was estimated at 264 billion dollars in 2022an increase of 23% compared to the period of 2010-2014.

The extreme temperatures also caused the loss of 490,000 million working hours global potential in 2022 (an increase of almost 42% compared to the period 1991-2000).

Income losses accounted for a much larger share of GDP in low-income (6.1%) and middle-income countries (3.8%). Such losses compromise people’s livelihoods, limiting countries’ ability to cope with and recover from the effects of climate change. “We face one crisis after another“warns Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, director of the regional center for small island developing states at Lancet Countdown.

“At a time when the world is on the brink of irreversible damage, the fact that governments and companies continue to invest shamelessly in the oil and gas industry means they are ensuring that the 1.5C objective of the Paris Agreement is not met. This would put the health of millions of people at risk,” stresses Paul Ekins, head of the Lancet Countdown working group on economics and finance.