‘Code red’: Health problems tied to climate change getting worse, reports show
Global News
The annual reports commissioned by Lancet tracked 44 global health indicators connected to climate change, including heat deaths, infectious diseases and hunger.
Health problems tied to climate change are all getting worse, according to two reports published Wednesday.
The annual reports commissioned by the medical journal Lancet tracked 44 global health indicators connected to climate change, including heat deaths, infectious diseases and hunger. All of them are getting grimmer, said Lancet Countdown project research director Marina Romanello, a biochemist.
“Rising temperatures are having consequences,” said University of Washington environmental health professor Kristie Ebi, a report co-author.
This year’s digital reports – one global, one just aimed at the United States – called “code red for a healthy future,” highlight dangerous trends:
“Code Red is not even a hot enough color for this report, ” said Stanford University tropical medicine professor Dr. Michele Barry, who wasn’t part of the study team. Compared to the last Lancet report, “this one is the sobering realization that we’re going completely in the wrong direction.”
In the U.S., heat, fire and drought caused the biggest problems. An unprecedented Pacific Northwest and Canadian heat wave hit this summer, which a previous study showed couldn’t have happened without human-caused climate change.
Study co-author Dr. Jeremy Hess, a professor of environmental health and emergency medicine at the University of Washington, said he witnessed the impacts of climate change while working at Seattle emergency rooms during the heat.
“I saw paramedics who had burns on their knees from kneeling down to care for patients with heat stroke,” he said. “”And I saw far too many patients die“ from the heat.