Global Warming and Public Health

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Global Warming and Public Health

• Robert M. Levin, MD
• Health Officer
• Ventura County
• April 7, 2008

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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

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Will global warming by itself change the
boundaries of the diseases we see?

• Malaria

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The Little Ice Age

• Hunters in the Snow by the Flemish painter Pieter
  Bruegel February,
  1565

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Vector-borne Disease

• Disease in humans carried from another
  warm-blooded animal by an insect such as a
  mosquito, tick or sandfly.

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Infectious Diseases Potentially Spread by Global
Warming

• Dengue fever
• Malaria
• Yellow fever
• Chickungunya fever
• Epidemic polyarthritis
• West Nile fever
• St. Louis encephalitis
• Lyme disease
• Ehrlichiosis
• Plague
• Loaiasis

• Leishmaniasis
• Kyasanur Forest disease
• La Crosse encephalitis
• Eastern equine encephalitis
• Japanese encephalitis
• Oropouche
• Western equine encephalitis
• Venezuelan equine encephalitis
• Onchocerciasis

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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

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The Human Response

• Housing
• Air conditioning
• Pesticides in the environment
• Bug spray on people
• Drainage
• Immunizations
• Netting
• Release predator insects and sterile mates

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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

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Leishmaniaisis Transmission
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Leishmaniasis
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Leishmaniasis in Germany
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Global Warming and Public Health