Global warming and climate change are facts, and even if we can give them a stop today, it is estimated that the average person will have a 6 months shorter life span due to both.
Rapid changes in climate have the potential to make every health issue more frequent and more violent, and even to create unforeseen health issues. This article will cover the 5 main health risk categories associated with global warming.

 

Worldwide health risks associated with climate change

Earth’s climate has never been steady in history but it also hasn’t ever been this volatile and man-made. A few Celsius degrees change would take hundreds of decades until the industrial revolution, but today it’s just a matter of years. Such rapid changes in climate make these health issues more common and more violent:

1. Heart diseases
People with heart conditions are very sensitive to hot weather. Global warming surely causes increased heart rates and extreme dehydration. Regarding that vascular occlusion can start as young 6 years of age, higher temperatures will make any pre-existing cardiovascular problem worse.

2. Respiratory diseases
Warmer temperatures simply mean more pollutants and tons of allergens. Moreover, climate change works in favor of certain type of plants, pollens of which your body maybe has never been exposed to. Also, the ground-level ozone concentration, which is linked to respiratory diseases, rises with climate change. Therefore, global warming is a major threat for respiratory health worldwide.

3. Mental issues
Global warming is a psychological threat as well as a physical one. Climate change and high temperatures ruins our mental health in different ways. Firstly, higher temperatures and humidity levels are triggers for many mental issues like panic attack, anxiety and depression. Secondly, climate change creates higher income gaps worldwide with all the natural disasters associated with it, and economic concerns are one of the biggest causes of mental problems.

4. Nutrition based illnesses
İdeal nutrition is simply accessing enough clean water and nutritive food. However, climate crisis is threatening our ten thousand years old agricultural system. Natural fresh water reserves are in danger with either floods or droughts. Harvests are lost due large wildfires reaching crops and livestock. At almost any part of the world nowadays, food prices are at an all-time high. Millions of people are just a disaster away from famine.

5. Pest-related diseases
Climate crisis has not only disrupted human life. The life cycles of our fellow neighbors from the animal kingdom are affected too. For example, Lyme disease which is caused by ticks was a hot summer disease. Today however, doctors from all around the world are reporting Lyme cases in winter months. Zika fever, which is spread by mosquitos, is another dramatic example. This virus was only seen in parts of Africa some 50 years ago. Today, Zika cases are literally everywhere, from United States to France, and from Brazil to India.