The effects of climate change (due to the action of nature or as a result of human activity and normal climate cycles) on public health can be direct (deaths and injuries because of floods or storms) as well as indirect (changes in the water, air or food quantity or quality).
Some studies have revealed that social impacts of climate change vary on age, socioeconomic class, occupations and gender. For example, several European studies have shown that women are more at risk of dying in a heatwave than men; other studies in England have found that women suffered more than men at worst time of flooding indeed.
One of the consequences of climate changes and natural disasters is a rising trend in the number of affected people and national economic losses. For every person that dies because of their direct or indirect effects, an important number of other people are also affected, either physically, mentally or through loss of property or livelihood.
Definitely, the principal cause of this climate change is the increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel emissions such as kerosene, gas, carbon, which have suffered a progressive increase since 1800 until nowadays.Must be added the massive use of chlorofluorocarbons, this compound is extremely dangerous as it destabilizes the ozone molecule, found in the atmosphere and which is used to filter sunlight. Only one of these molecules can eliminate 100,000 ozone molecules (data taken from the wikipedia), so it is understandable that due to the destruction of the ozone layer we are getting more energy to our planet.
One of the main health problems of the destruction of the ozone layer is the skin cancer. The rates of skin cancer have been increased because the reduction of the ozone at the atmosphere. The most common type of skin cancer, the non-melanoma cancer, is caused by the exposition at UV-B radiation during years. The PNUMA (Program of the United Nations for the Environmet) predicts that with a rate of 10% ozone lost by year, skin cancer incidence will increase to around 250000 cases each year.
Furthermore, the worst effects of climate change are suffered by all those ones who deserve it less. What I mean is that developed countries produce a huge amount of pollutants which cause, as a last resort, climate change. And then, developing countries suffer horrible natural disasters with dreadful healthy consequences because they haven´t enough resources to overcome the situation. Thus, human impact happens when climate threats and vulnerability in the population converge.
In order to slow down this public-health and environmental problem, all the countries should follow the Kioto protocol. They need to reduce the level of toxic gases. It is essential to understand the situation, to make people aware of the health hazards that go with it and establish systems in order to prevent and reduce damage.
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which goal is fighting global warming and achieving stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This Protocol was created on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and established on 16 February 2005. Last July, 191 states have signed the protocol. Under the Protocol, 39 industrialized countries and the European Union commit themselves to reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from the 1991 level. If the Kyoto Protocol succeed, the global temperature would be reduced between 1,4°C and 5,8 °C till 2100, which would be a great achievement towards this problem we are facing.
Third world countries are more affected about climate change because they haven't enough money for solving all natural disaster's consequences, not even for preventing these situations. But it is important to know that these countries have a very hard work preventing climate change because they are industrializing at this moment, so it is difficult to grow up (economically speaking), without damaging the enviroment. Of course I'm not excusing the obligation with the enviroment.
One of the most important effects of the global warming is the increase of plagues like malaria and dengue and the apparition of new infectious diseases related to the raise of the temperatures. Severe weather patterns cause problems in agriculture, which increase hunger's rate in the most affected countries. However, it is to be noted that it was climate change which allowed the Agriculture Revolution to take place.
Hurricanes, torrential rains and drought are some of the dangerous consequences of the climate modification and they will be responsible of a lot of deaths in the future if we don't stop it.
As we have mentioned before, all these natural disasters have taken place mostly at regions located between the tropics: it means, underdeveloped and developing countries.
Deaths are not caused only by the disaster itself. For example, the problem of a flood is not just the destruction of entire poor villages; it involves that the access to medical services will also be affected; drinkable water will become contaminated; if people are forced to move away from their homes and live in overcrowding places, it will increase the risk of getting communicable diseases; etc.
However, not all the health disorders due to climate change happen in poor countries. For instance, the number of deaths because of heat waves in Europe has risen up in the last decades; this is obviously a consequence of extreme high air temperatures. And urban air pollution is a problem of big cities, which are mostly placed in developed countries.
In the future we will have to rationalized our industrial activity if we want to survive. Most of the unhealthy effects of climate change are preventable but it is not easy to change the economic relations. Maybe we should calculate the incidence of disease and mortality related with pollution to promote prevention programs in order to show the economic benefits, if we do not have to spend money in these diseases in the hospitalary context.
And how can we help prevent this problem? It might seem a very difficult thing to solve, because of the many countries and persons involved in it, but I think that we should start little by little. What I mean is we should start by ourselves. If we each made a small effort, the results would be huge. Some of these efforts are: recycling our garbage, turning out the lights when we are not using them, using public transportation whenever it is possible... Of course, I understand that bigger things are needed, such as the Kyoto Protocol, because it controls the pollution coming from big industries, but we are the ones who consume what they make, soy we are also responsible for this problem.
Well, the solution is applying, at the same time, big and small measures and monitoring those measures! Like it was said before, it's important to reduce, reuse, recycle, use public transports whenever be possible, etc. But, the most important is promoting this information using media (for example: radio, television, newspapers, advertising campaigns) and educate people to be ecological! About big effors, it's not only important to create rules to protect the planet (like the Kyoto Protocol) but it is also important to monitor those regulations. A monitoring entity should exist to control if big industries are complying with these rules and if they aren't, these industries should be brought to justice.
If everyone made an effort, little by little, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would gradually decrease, climate would gradually stabilize, natural catastrophes would become less frequent in underdevelopment countries, the incidence and prevalence of some diseases would decrease and public health would generally improve!
As it has been mentioned above, each and every one of us must contribute to the solution to "save our planet."
although someone can think that a small contribution is not going to achieve anything, it is not really like that, because we are millions and millions of people that will fight for the cause.
And hopefully I'm wrong, but I also believe that we are a society that does not react for the common good until you really notice the consequences. A society that looks for the good of their own, of course excluding a large part of people, that is not the majority.
One important effect of the climate change on public healt is that this phenomena may increase the risk of some infectious diseases, particularly those diseases that appear in warm areas and are spread by mosquitoes and other insects. Higher temperatures, added to favorable rainfall patterns, could make longer the season in wich the disease is transmitted in some locations where that diseases already exist, so that increasing also the probability of have more infected people.
That´s why everybody must become aware of the effects, because everybody must cooperate. It´s a big problem and we are all affected so we have to solve it. We might promote more advertising campaign in order to inform more about all the effects it entails. Probably the information frightens many people.
One of the most important effect of Climate Change is the increased of thehole in the ozone layer which, as we said before, is regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, and among other things, is closely related to skin cancer. We have said that melanoma is the most common type of skin cancer, it is due to nowadays people spend much more time sunbathing than many years ago and even pay for it in beauty centers without knowing the danger. Some of them don’t use sunscreen or they don’t use the correct factor, so they are burned and their skin suffers the consequence, that apart from cancer, are premature skin aging, cataracts, immune system damage, etc.
However, they don’t realized and continue with excessive exposure due to most of these injuries happen in a long period of time, since the sun effects are cumulative. This behaviour proves (once again), how unconscious is the human being, who usually does not act until the problem has appeared and when it can be too late. If we extrapolate this to the climate change, these are not good news for our planet, because it doesn´t seem very likely that politicians act in an efficient way until we have important problems. On the other hand, we know that selfishness is another important characteristic of human beings. This is the characteristic that will save planet Earth, because until our sons and daughters are not in danger, politicians will not act properly.
Back to previous topic, melanoma is a big problem as result of climate change, between many others, and the solution is medical....but does anybody thing how hospitals and all the medical procedures, surgery, cares contaminate and contribue to the climate change? It's really ironic how all the sterile measures who save people from contamination, infection and other complications in a long term affects the environement because most of the sterile material can only be used once( all made of plastic, dressings...). It's difficult so as necessary to change things as much as we can, but at the same time there will still be many others things that will affect the environment in our routine (think of all the material made from plastic every person throws every day and that is used without thinking, all the plastic wrapping in everything...etc.) and that will need a great advance, effort and lost comfort to be eliminated from our life.
To sum up, climate change and its consequences, caused by the human race and suffered by it, must be solved by cooperation. Everyone must change his or her lifestyle in order to prevent this problem as much as possible. Talking about public health, climate change is promoted by this system (in fact climate change is promoted by everything we do), and it is also responsible of some problems that affect directly to the public health system, such us infectious diseases, melanoma, heatstrokes or natural disasters (as they have been already mentioned). In fact the real problem is that we haven't realized yet that everything in our life will change early if we don't try to solve the most important disaster that the Earth has ever faced up.
Although all the disasters named before are imortant , anyone wil have more consecuences than the destruction of the ozone layer. This will rise temperture and a lot of countries will directly vanish. The oceans will destroy it. Lot of enviroments will change and animals ( microorganisms too) will adapt their way of life modifiying places where they life. This means that , for example, some diseases that we dont have here on our country , wil be completely endemic as lepra or tuberculossis. There will be pests, that damaging our crops, will transform our country in an undeveloped country absolutly ( we will die with hunger).
The temperature increases day a day. In some regions, these higher temperatures are increasing the frequency and severity of fire events. In other regions high-impact events, as floods can overwhelm physical infrastructure and human communities. Our appreciations nowadays are hot days, hot nights and heatwaves more frequent.
In 2012 the protocol of Kyoto runs out. At the conference of Cophenagen in 2009, Govermental representatives met for the last time to renew the climate agreement. The Cophenagen Accord was created by the US, India, China, Brazil and South Africa. It set a goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees.The document does not contain any binding commitments for reducing CO2 emissions. Many countries and non-govermental organitations have declared their disappointment about this agreement.The objective of this protocol is a reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with te climate system. This protocol intends to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. The treaty has been signed by 141 nations who together account for 55% of global carbon dioxide emissions. People hopes that this protocol will help us to overcome this big problem that we are all worried about.
The effects of climate change on public health
The effects of climate change (due to the action of nature or as a result of human activity and normal climate cycles) on public health can be direct (deaths and injuries because of floods or storms) as well as indirect (changes in the water, air or food quantity or quality).
Some studies have revealed that social impacts of climate change vary on age, socioeconomic class, occupations and gender. For example, several European studies have shown that women are more at risk of dying in a heatwave than men; other studies in England have found that women suffered more than men at worst time of flooding indeed.
One of the consequences of climate changes and natural disasters is a rising trend in the number of affected people and national economic losses. For every person that dies because of their direct or indirect effects, an important number of other people are also affected, either physically, mentally or through loss of property or livelihood.
Definitely, the principal cause of this climate change is the increase of carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere due to fossil fuel emissions such as kerosene, gas, carbon, which have suffered a progressive increase since 1800 until nowadays.Must be added the massive use of chlorofluorocarbons, this compound is extremely dangerous as it destabilizes the ozone molecule, found in the atmosphere and which is used to filter sunlight. Only one of these molecules can eliminate 100,000 ozone molecules (data taken from the wikipedia), so it is understandable that due to the destruction of the ozone layer we are getting more energy to our planet.
One of the main health problems of the destruction of the ozone layer is the skin cancer. The rates of skin cancer have been increased because the reduction of the ozone at the atmosphere. The most common type of skin cancer, the non-melanoma cancer, is caused by the exposition at UV-B radiation during years. The PNUMA (Program of the United Nations for the Environmet) predicts that with a rate of 10% ozone lost by year, skin cancer incidence will increase to around 250000 cases each year.
Furthermore, the worst effects of climate change are suffered by all those ones who deserve it less. What I mean is that developed countries produce a huge amount of pollutants which cause, as a last resort, climate change. And then, developing countries suffer horrible natural disasters with dreadful healthy consequences because they haven´t enough resources to overcome the situation. Thus, human impact happens when climate threats and vulnerability in the population converge.
In order to slow down this public-health and environmental problem, all the countries should follow the Kioto protocol. They need to reduce the level of toxic gases. It is essential to understand the situation, to make people aware of the health hazards that go with it and establish systems in order to prevent and reduce damage.
The Kyoto Protocol is a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which goal is fighting global warming and achieving stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere. This Protocol was created on 11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan and established on 16 February 2005. Last July, 191 states have signed the protocol. Under the Protocol, 39 industrialized countries and the European Union commit themselves to reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from the 1991 level. If the Kyoto Protocol succeed, the global temperature would be reduced between 1,4°C and 5,8 °C till 2100, which would be a great achievement towards this problem we are facing.
Third world countries are more affected about climate change because they haven't enough money for solving all natural disaster's consequences, not even for preventing these situations. But it is important to know that these countries have a very hard work preventing climate change because they are industrializing at this moment, so it is difficult to grow up (economically speaking), without damaging the enviroment. Of course I'm not excusing the obligation with the enviroment.
One of the most important effects of the global warming is the increase of plagues like malaria and dengue and the apparition of new infectious diseases related to the raise of the temperatures. Severe weather patterns cause problems in agriculture, which increase hunger's rate in the most affected countries. However, it is to be noted that it was climate change which allowed the Agriculture Revolution to take place.
Hurricanes, torrential rains and drought are some of the dangerous consequences of the climate modification and they will be responsible of a lot of deaths in the future if we don't stop it.
As we have mentioned before, all these natural disasters have taken place mostly at regions located between the tropics: it means, underdeveloped and developing countries.
Deaths are not caused only by the disaster itself. For example, the problem of a flood is not just the destruction of entire poor villages; it involves that the access to medical services will also be affected; drinkable water will become contaminated; if people are forced to move away from their homes and live in overcrowding places, it will increase the risk of getting communicable diseases; etc.
However, not all the health disorders due to climate change happen in poor countries. For instance, the number of deaths because of heat waves in Europe has risen up in the last decades; this is obviously a consequence of extreme high air temperatures. And urban air pollution is a problem of big cities, which are mostly placed in developed countries.
In the future we will have to rationalized our industrial activity if we want to survive. Most of the unhealthy effects of climate change are preventable but it is not easy to change the economic relations. Maybe we should calculate the incidence of disease and mortality related with pollution to promote prevention programs in order to show the economic benefits, if we do not have to spend money in these diseases in the hospitalary context.
And how can we help prevent this problem? It might seem a very difficult thing to solve, because of the many countries and persons involved in it, but I think that we should start little by little. What I mean is we should start by ourselves. If we each made a small effort, the results would be huge. Some of these efforts are: recycling our garbage, turning out the lights when we are not using them, using public transportation whenever it is possible... Of course, I understand that bigger things are needed, such as the Kyoto Protocol, because it controls the pollution coming from big industries, but we are the ones who consume what they make, soy we are also responsible for this problem.
Well, the solution is applying, at the same time, big and small measures and monitoring those measures! Like it was said before, it's important to reduce, reuse, recycle, use public transports whenever be possible, etc. But, the most important is promoting this information using media (for example: radio, television, newspapers, advertising campaigns) and educate people to be ecological! About big effors, it's not only important to create rules to protect the planet (like the Kyoto Protocol) but it is also important to monitor those regulations. A monitoring entity should exist to control if big industries are complying with these rules and if they aren't, these industries should be brought to justice.
If everyone made an effort, little by little, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would gradually decrease, climate would gradually stabilize, natural catastrophes would become less frequent in underdevelopment countries, the incidence and prevalence of some diseases would decrease and public health would generally improve!
As it has been mentioned above, each and every one of us must contribute to the solution to "save our planet."
although someone can think that a small contribution is not going to achieve anything, it is not really like that, because we are millions and millions of people that will fight for the cause.
And hopefully I'm wrong, but I also believe that we are a society that does not react for the common good until you really notice the consequences. A society that looks for the good of their own, of course excluding a large part of people, that is not the majority.
One important effect of the climate change on public healt is that this phenomena may increase the risk of some infectious diseases, particularly those diseases that appear in warm areas and are spread by mosquitoes and other insects. Higher temperatures, added to favorable rainfall patterns, could make longer the season in wich the disease is transmitted in some locations where that diseases already exist, so that increasing also the probability of have more infected people.
That´s why everybody must become aware of the effects, because everybody must cooperate. It´s a big problem and we are all affected so we have to solve it. We might promote more advertising campaign in order to inform more about all the effects it entails. Probably the information frightens many people.
One of the most important effect of Climate Change is the increased of the hole in the ozone layer which, as we said before, is regulated by the Kyoto Protocol, and among other things, is closely related to skin cancer. We have said that melanoma is the most common type of skin cancer, it is due to nowadays people spend much more time sunbathing than many years ago and even pay for it in beauty centers without knowing the danger. Some of them don’t use sunscreen or they don’t use the correct factor, so they are burned and their skin suffers the consequence, that apart from cancer, are premature skin aging, cataracts, immune system damage, etc.
However, they don’t realized and continue with excessive exposure due to most of these injuries happen in a long period of time, since the sun effects are cumulative. This behaviour proves (once again), how unconscious is the human being, who usually does not act until the problem has appeared and when it can be too late. If we extrapolate this to the climate change, these are not good news for our planet, because it doesn´t seem very likely that politicians act in an efficient way until we have important problems. On the other hand, we know that selfishness is another important characteristic of human beings. This is the characteristic that will save planet Earth, because until our sons and daughters are not in danger, politicians will not act properly.
Back to previous topic, melanoma is a big problem as result of climate change, between many others, and the solution is medical....but does anybody thing how hospitals and all the medical procedures, surgery, cares contaminate and contribue to the climate change? It's really ironic how all the sterile measures who save people from contamination, infection and other complications in a long term affects the environement because most of the sterile material can only be used once( all made of plastic, dressings...). It's difficult so as necessary to change things as much as we can, but at the same time there will still be many others things that will affect the environment in our routine (think of all the material made from plastic every person throws every day and that is used without thinking, all the plastic wrapping in everything...etc.) and that will need a great advance, effort and lost comfort to be eliminated from our life.
To sum up, climate change and its consequences, caused by the human race and suffered by it, must be solved by cooperation. Everyone must change his or her lifestyle in order to prevent this problem as much as possible. Talking about public health, climate change is promoted by this system (in fact climate change is promoted by everything we do), and it is also responsible of some problems that affect directly to the public health system, such us infectious diseases, melanoma, heatstrokes or natural disasters (as they have been already mentioned). In fact the real problem is that we haven't realized yet that everything in our life will change early if we don't try to solve the most important disaster that the Earth has ever faced up.
Although all the disasters named before are imortant , anyone wil have more consecuences than the destruction of the ozone layer. This will rise temperture and a lot of countries will directly vanish. The oceans will destroy it. Lot of enviroments will change and animals ( microorganisms too) will adapt their way of life modifiying places where they life. This means that , for example, some diseases that we dont have here on our country , wil be completely endemic as lepra or tuberculossis. There will be pests, that damaging our crops, will transform our country in an undeveloped country absolutly ( we will die with hunger).
The temperature increases day a day. In some regions, these higher temperatures are increasing the frequency and severity of fire events. In other regions high-impact events, as floods can overwhelm physical infrastructure and human communities. Our appreciations nowadays are hot days, hot nights and heatwaves more frequent.
In 2012 the protocol of Kyoto runs out. At the conference of Cophenagen in 2009, Govermental representatives met for the last time to renew the climate agreement. The Cophenagen Accord was created by the US, India, China, Brazil and South Africa. It set a goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees.The document does not contain any binding commitments for reducing CO2 emissions. Many countries and non-govermental organitations have declared their disappointment about this agreement.The objective of this protocol is a reconstruction of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous interference with te climate system. This protocol intends to cut global emissions of greenhouse gases. The treaty has been signed by 141 nations who together account for 55% of global carbon dioxide emissions. People hopes that this protocol will help us to overcome this big problem that we are all worried about.