Transcript Global Warming and Public Health

Global Warming
and Public Health
Robert M. Levin, MD
Health Officer
Ventura County
April 7, 2008
Public Health Impacts of Global
Warming
• Heat waves and deaths from hyperthermia
• Fresh water shortages (due to combined effects of global
warming, overpopulation and water pollution) with wars fought
over fresh water
• Air pollution related to greenhouse gases (increased disease
and death due to heart attack, stroke, asthma, emphysema,
lung cancer, allergy)
• Ozone depletion leading to increased cataracts, melanoma
• Extreme weather events (floods and storms)
• Water-borne and food-borne diseases (toxic algal blooms like
red tide, survival of viral pathogens leading to shellfish
poisoning, cholera)
• Vector-borne and rodent-borne diseases (mosquitoes, ticks,
rodents)
• Elevated seas levels (population exodus, aquifers threatened in
San Francisco and New Orleans)
• Crop failures and famine
• Economic and political stress may damage public health
infrastructure
Will global warming by itself
change the boundaries of the
diseases we see?
Malaria
The Little Ice Age
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Hunters in the Snow by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel
February, 1565
Vector-borne Disease
• Disease in humans carried from another
warm-blooded animal by an insect such as
a mosquito, tick or sandfly.
Infectious Diseases Potentially
Spread by Global Warming
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Dengue fever
Malaria
Yellow fever
Chickungunya fever
Epidemic polyarthritis
West Nile fever
St. Louis encephalitis
Lyme disease
Ehrlichiosis
Plague
Loaiasis
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Leishmaniasis
Kyasanur Forest disease
La Crosse encephalitis
Eastern equine
encephalitis
Japanese encephalitis
Oropouche
Western equine
encephalitis
Venezuelan equine
encephalitis
Onchocerciasis
Example: The Complexity of Disease
Spread - Dengue Fever
 Vast difference in the amount of Dengue in
Nuevo Laredo, Mexico and Laredo, Texas
 Dengue Fever is called “breakbone fever”
 Americans stay indoors and have air
conditioning
 Public places in Mexico are not likely to be
air conditioned and are open to the
elements
The Human Response
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Housing
Air conditioning
Pesticides in the environment
Bug spray on people
Drainage
Immunizations
Netting
Release predator insects and sterile mates
Leishmaniasis
• Skin lesion like bump or
ulcer
• Heals spontaneously or
smolders for years
• Destructive changes in
nose or throat
• Disfiguring
• Other form is visceral
leishmaniasis
• Fever, anemia,
weakness, emaciation,
enlarged liver, spleen,
death
Leishmaniaisis Transmission
Leishmaniasis
Leishmaniasis in Germany
Global Warming and Public Health