Environmental & Analytical Toxicology

Climate Change and Health Hazards

Abstract

Apeksha Kumari* and Prashant Chaudhry

Climate change can often appear as a distant, abstract issue. Evidence of climate change is often presented in terms of long-term averages, such as the fact that the earth is currently, after accounting for natural fluctuations, 1.1°C warmer than the 1880-1920 average, or that India has warmed by about 0.8°C since 1901. Invaluable as the science has been and grave as these numbers are, abstract data often does not adequately communicate the impacts of these changes on people’s lives. Overwhelming evidence shows that climate change presents growing threats to public health security from extreme weather-related disasters to wider spread of such vector-borne diseases as malaria and dengue. The impacts of climate on human health will not be evenly distributed around the world. The author attempts to analyse the health hazards due to climate change in the environment and how it really impact the lives of people to negotiate it in the already existed inadequate public health infrastructure as nearly 700 million of population living in rural areas directly depends on climate-sensitive sectors (agriculture, forests and fisheries) and natural resources (such as water, biodiversity, mangroves, coastal zones, grasslands) for their subsistence and livelihoods. Heat wave, floods (land and coastal) and draughts occur commonly. Malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea are major public health problems. The author also discusses that if there is any further increase in the climate change disasters, then it may cripple our inadequate public health infrastructure leading to urgent responding of situation, thereby by suggesting and exploring some response options to reduce the risk of climate change on the health of the people.