Climate Change and Human Health

Climate change brings massive detriment to human health

The influences that climate change brings are diversified, and they can be harmful and even destructive in most cases. Environmental issues are getting more serious each year; pollution, global warming, decreased sea levels, and green gas emissions are becoming more worrying as the problem worsens. More importantly, human health has shown to be vigilantly harmed in various ways, including food security, natural disasters, and diseases, because of the depletion of earth’s resources. This is no doubt a terrifying fact that, if climate change continues to deteriorate without preventive measures, human health is likely to fall to a rocket bottom.

One major damage climate change has on is food security and production. The quality and productivity of food directly affect human health. For instance, food shortages can lead to famine and increased mortality, while food insecurity can lead to increased prevalence of various related diseases. The most direct effects of climate change on food production are changes in temperature and rainfall. The former can influence the length of growing seasons, which largely decreases production of food, and thus leads to more serious problems. For example, as rising temperatures shorten the growing season of plants and crops, resulting in loss of food production and increased reliance on local people to buy food, further driving up food prices and ultimately increases poverty and decreases health insurance (Gregory 2005). The latter one, on the other hand, can lead to droughts or floods, which greatly reduces the survival rate of crops. As pointed out by P.J.Gregory in his article, “Food systems encompass food availability, food access and food utilization, so that food security is, therefore, diminished when food systems are stressed.” When food and crops are affected, poverty and famine set in, human health thus will be damaged largely. 

Another major worrying issue elicited by climate change is natural hazards. Over the past few decades, one of the most important threats to human health has been natural disasters. Hurricanes, heat waves, torrential rains and droughts kill countless numbers of people each year. Long-term climate change, even if it is slow, will cause essential changes in the ecosystem, thus affecting the health of human society. Take Iran as an instance, “one hundred and three natural disasters happened between 1900 and 2012 in Iran, with a total of 155,878 deaths. Iran’s natural disasters risk class has been estimated as 8 out of 10, and the trend of its natural disasters has been increasing in recent years (Mousavi 2019).” To conclude, natural disasters caused by climate change have already elicited great harm to human beings, while continued climate change is more likely to have a devastating impact.

The last negative impact of climate change is the spread of diseases. Lorena Pasquini emphasizes in her research that water quality problems caused by climate change are inextricably linked to heat-sensitivity. Adequate drinking water is essential for effective thermoregulation, and if water is not available or of poor quality, some people may be extremely sensitive to the risk of dehydration, heat-related diseases and water-borne diseases. In Africa for example, “one health sector respondent noted that she believed low-income residents in Dar to be most vulnerable to non-communicable diseases, while two others mentioned that low-income residents are those most vulnerable to malaria (Pasquini 2020).” Therefore, spreading diseases caused by climate change are particularly severe in poverty areas. 

Further causations of climate change on human health

There is no doubt that climate change has brought irreversible damage to human health, and it is still causing harm as people keep consuming resources of the earth. Besides exploring the destruction that has already been done, knowing how climate change will affect health is also crucial for apprehending this topic. It is worth acknowledging that the influences brought by this phenomenon are not all negative, such as global warming will increase global heat, allowing several types of crops to be sown more widely. For human health, however, climate change will do more harm than good in many cases.

The previous section has mentioned that declined water quality leads to water-borne disease, yet the contributing factors can be more sophisticated. Air pollution and extreme weather led by increasing temperature are highly related to the spread of diseases. According to the record, in the 1990s, an epidemic of valley fever broke out in the U.S. during a prolonged heavy rainfall that followed a drought, in which the fungus immitis can spread hundreds of miles by wind and infects people and animals when the dangerous spores are inhaled (Martens 1999). Under such conditions, the prevalence of disease has risen significantly and human health has thus plummeted. 

According to the article written by Susan E. Pacheco, the health of children and infants will also decrease largely as the climate change keeps worsening. Records show that because of the natural hazards, families are so traumatized that they are unable to provide basic emotional and physical needs for their offspring. In addition, the death rate of children has boosted rapidly also due to the increasing number of disasters happening each year.  “Weather-related  disasters directly affected an estimated 66.5  million  children  worldwide  every year  from  1990–2000,  and  such  events are expected to affect 175 million children per  year  over  the  upcoming  decades” (Pacheco 2020). Reduction of children’s health directly associated with the health insurance of all human beings; governments should therefore put more effort into resolving the issue.

Prevention and protection strategies

In The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert vividly and comprehensively demonstrates how the diversity of species is disappearing on this planet because of human over-harvesting and climate change. The book introduces numerous species that are endangered and describes how they could become extinct due to climate change. This makes the audience unable to stop thinking about what measures human beings should take to prevent such tragedies. In fact, besides Kolbert, governments, epidemiologists and geologists are especially concerned about this issue. 

Pim Martens underlined in his article that “aside from empirical research, there is a need for new theoretical and conceptual approaches to estimating the effects of the changing global environment on human health”, indicating that preventing the negative consequences of climate change is not a problem that can be solved in a short time. For the sake of alleviating the damages caused by climate change, careful regional planning across the country is necessary. Because the ecological environment and climate of different regions are very different, consistent management measures do not work very well. As stated by Paul J. Schramm and his colleagues, “Utilization of local data and expertise can drive effective programs tailored to specific needs”. On the other hand, timely and accurate assessments of climate change will also help prevention efforts. It is necessary for governments to construct systematic assessment methods and utilize them as aids for intervening losses of human health.

Works Cited

Pacheco, Susan E. “Catastrophic Effects of Climate Change on Children's Health Start before Birth.” The Journal of Clinical Investigation, American Society for Clinical Investigation, 3 Feb. 2020, https://www.jci.org/articles/view/135005.

Schramm, P.J., Ahmed, M., Siegel, H. et al. Climate Change and Health: Local Solutions to Local Challenges. Curr Envir Health Rpt 7, 363–370 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40572-020-00294-1

Pasquini, Lorena, et al. “Emerging Climate Change-Related Public Health Challenges in Africa: A Case Study of the Heat-Health Vulnerability of Informal Settlement Residents in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.” Science of The Total Environment, Elsevier, 29 July 2020, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141355

Mousavi, Arefeh, et al. “Climate Change and Health in Iran: A Narrative Review.” Journal of Environmental Health Science and Engineering, Springer International Publishing, 2 Apr. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40201-020-00462-3

Martens, P. (1999, December). How will climate change affect human health? - JSTOR. JSTOR. Retrieved November 2, 2021, from https://www.jstor.org/stable/27857937.