by Mark Schapiro
May 17, 2023
Introduction:
(Capital & Main) The direct and indirect health impacts of climate change are one of the most underreported aspects of the climate crisis. The medical and scientific journals are filled with examples of diseases shifting along with the shifting climatic conditions, but the links between the environment and personal health rarely make it into the media. In the last column I talked about the direct impacts of greenhouse gases on our health. This time, let’s focus on why the American Public Health Association has determined that the changing climate being wrought by the accumulation of those gases in the atmosphere are triggering a health emergency.
Medical professionals in the U.S., warns the CDC, may be thoroughly unprepared to treat diseases that have been previously confined to tropical Africa and Latin America. The World Health Organization says that climate change presents “the biggest health threat facing humanity.” Bugs and bacteria, it turns out, can adapt much better to a changing environment than we humans.
The scientific press is filled with examples of how the changing climate is opening new pathways for insects following the heat, fungi following the moisture, algal blooms proliferating in warming waters fed by phosphate-based agricultural runoff — and how all are being buffeted by the frequency of the extreme swings in temperature and rainfall.
Start with disease-bearing mosquitoes — whose range is rapidly expanding inside the continental United States. The mosquito family known as Aedes aegypti, most responsible for transmitting diseases like zika, dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, has largely been limited to the tropics but is following the heat into a broad band across the southern United States, from North Carolina and Virginia into the southern portions of California and Arizona.
Warm, humid conditions and the later onset of winter have also helped spur an expansion in the range of ticks carrying lyme disease for longer seasons in the Northeast, and showing up in greater numbers as far west as California.
The article also discusses the release of sterile male mosquitos as an abatement strategy.
The spread of fungi carrying what’s known as Valley fever is also mentioned. The proliferation of marine bacteria called Vibrio is reviewed. The Vibrio bacteria infects shellfish and is easily transmitted to humans, for whom it can cause digestive and skin ailments.
Read more here: https://capitalandmain.com/the-climate ... th-crisis