Study ties 150,000 deaths to warming
TOLL COULD DOUBLE BY 2030; ILLNESS FIGURES ALSO RISINGBy Juliet Eilperin
THE WASHINGTON POST
Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030.
The data, published yesterday in the journal Nature, indicate that climate change is driving up rates of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea worldwide.
Health and climate scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison -- who conducted one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to measure the effect of global warming on health -- said the WHO data also show that rising temperatures disproportionately affect poor countries. The scientists reached their conclusions after plugging data on climate-sensitive diseases into mapping software.
The regions most at risk from climate change include the Asian and South American Pacific coasts, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa. Large cities are also likely to experience more severe health problems because they produce what scientists refer to as urban "heat island" effect.
Just this week, WHO officials reported that warmer temperatures and heavy rains in South Asia have led to the worst outbreak of dengue fever there in years. The mosquito-borne illness, now beginning to taper off, has infected 120,000 South Asians this year and killed at least 1,000.
Senior U.S. and international officials said they now regard climate change as a major public health threat. Howard Frumkin, who directs the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called climate change "a significant global health challenge" in an interview this week.
Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, a WHO scientist, said initial estimates of global warming-related deaths are conservative in light of Europe's massive 2003 heat wave and new research linking climate change to greater hurricane activity.
"Climate change makes it even more important to combat diseases of the poor, many of which are highly climate-sensitive," said Campbell-Lendrum, who co-authored the Nature paper with Jonathan Patz, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "We already have good evidence that there are a series of significant risks to health, which makes it even more important to curb greenhouse gas emissions in a short period of time."
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