- Commissioner Enhances FDA’s Commitment to Personalized Medicine
- Perfecting Policy on Stem Cells
- NIH and FDA Aim to Retool Regulatory Science
- DOE Leads Federal Funding for a Regional Innovation Cluster
- Certainty on the Science of Climate Change
- They’re Not Perfect Cells, But They’re Model Cells
- Genomic Medicine on the March
- President’s Budget Aims to Recharge Regional Innovation
- Event: The Science of Climate Change
- Progress in Bioethics
- The Top Science Progress Features of 2009
- Science Education Progress
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
The Human Toll of Climate Change: Health Impacts Around the Globe
Recent studies have built on research showing that climate change will have damaging consequences for human health. In his article today, “Global Ailing,” contributor Jeremy Jacquot looks back over existing work and outlines the latest science, stressing the importance of past warnings about the impact of global warming on public well being.
Here’s a look at some of the latest research on health impacts around the world plotted on the Science Progress interactive Human Toll of Climate Change map:
Scientific American’s review of the top ten places already affected by climate change reported that Europe’s first tropical disease epidemic in August 2007 resulted from climate change. More than 100 of 2,000 residents of a small village in Italy contracted a disease related to dengue fever because an abnormally mild winter allowed the Asian tiger mosquito, the disease vector, to breed early in India. A resident of the village visited India and introduced the disease to Italy.
The Centers for Disease Control discovered that a change to warmer, wetter weeks in the United States increased West Nile infections by up to 83 percent from 2001 to 2005. CDC scientists warn that increased rates of West Nile around the globe will lead to a significant number climate-change related dealths.
A study published in the journal Science found that there is a 90 percent chance that 3 billion people will be forced to choose between starving and moving to milder climates within 100 years because of climate change.
In a study released earlier this year, a Penn State entomologist emphasized that daily temperature fluctuations-not just changes in average monthly or annual temperatures-may alter malaria patterns. Whether the temperature fluctuations cause the incidence of malaria to increase or decrease depends largely on a region’s background conditions. Mosquitoes may fail to develop the malaria parasite before they die, or the parasite may develop faster, the study reports.
Image: AP/Lisa Poole
Comments on this article
