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October
23, 2006 "When most people
think
about climate change, they think of heat stress from heat waves," said
Cindy Parker, M.D., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health in "Scientists (in the
U.S.)
haven't done a good job of communicating why climate change is
important to
regular people," said Parker, who was invited to give a presentation on
the health hazards of global warming at the Annual Meeting of the
Geological
Society of America in Philadelphia. Parker will speak in a Pardee
Keynote
Symposium on Sunday, 22 October. "The other thing
that has
gotten a lot of media attention is the increased risk of infectious
diseases," said Parker. "This is of greater concern to other parts of
the world than the "In my professional
opinion,
some of the less direct impacts will be much more devastating for us,"
said Parker. Hurricane Katrina
was a primer on
the matter. Global warming will bring bigger storms and hurricanes that
will
hold more water, according to climate scientists. Katrina showed how
the water
from a hurricane does far more damage than the high winds. All that
flooding
brings with it a host of direct and indirect health problems. "As we saw from Thirteen of the 20
largest cities
on earth are located at sea level on coasts, Parker points out. "As sea
level rises, there go our medical institutions, water treatment plants,
emergency response units such as fire departments and ambulances. The
bulk of
the services designed to keep us healthy are almost all located in our
larger
cities, which are also located frequently at sea level." Then there is the
matter of
water. Clean water is one of the most basic and critical health needs.
But
climate change is threatening water supply quantities in many areas as
well as
water quality. "Even without
climate
change, water is already in short supply," said Parker. "But under
changed climate conditions, precipitation patterns are expected to
change." That means droughts and famines could become more prominent. Worsening water
quality is
expected to go hand-in-hand with the continuing deterioration of the
natural
ecosystems all around us. "We rely on our
ecosystems
to provide very basic services to us," Parker explained. "Despite our
technology, we can't live without clean water, clean air, and soil to
produce
food. We rely on healthy ecosystems to provide these basic and absolute
necessities." Forests, for
example, absorb
carbon dioxide from the environment, photosynthesize, and release
oxygen as a
waste product, which is essential for animal life. Similarly, with
water, a healthy
ecosystem such as a forest or wetland can filter a lot of toxins out of
water
and provide us with clean drinking water. Water supplies and
water quality
are already major health problems worldwide. In most years, drought and
famine
cause more than half of all deaths from natural disasters. Already 1.8
million
people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases caused
by
contaminated water. Climate change will just make this worse, Parker
says. Another absolute and
basic need
is, of course, food. That's also facing trouble, says Parker. Climate
change
will bring huge changes to how we grow food. Studies are mounting that
show
crops are likely to be more negatively affected by climate change than
previously thought. "We need to steel ourselves from changes and, quite
likely, reductions in food supplies from around the world." All these changes,
plus
displacements of millions of people as was seen after Hurricane
Katrina, pose
health threats for everyone. But the most vulnerable members of our
societies
will be hardest hit, such as children, elders, city dwellers, and those
who are
socio-economically disadvantaged, says Parker. Planning for these
threats and
taking measures to minimize impacts is happening much too slowly, she
said. "These measures
don't
necessarily require a lot of money and we already have the new
technology," she said. "I'm a preventive medicine physician, and I
use that training and way of thinking with respect to climate change as
well.
It makes a whole lot more sense to me to prevent our climate from more
instability rather than waiting and putting our research and resources
into
trying to fix problems after they've happened." ## Contact:
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