The researchers found that between 1986 and 2005, there were 3 billion extra “person-day” exposures to severe heat for those over 65 than the norm.
According to two papers released on Wednesday, all of the health issues linked to climate change are growing worse. The medical magazine Lancet commissioned yearly studies that tracked 44 global health indices linked to climate change, such as heat fatalities, infectious illnesses, and famine. All of them are growing worse, according to Marina Romanello, the Lancet Countdown project’s research director and a biochemist.
Vulnerable populations: Last year, older individuals and the very young spent more time in hazardous temperatures. The researchers found that between 1986 and 2005, there were 3 billion extra “person-day” exposures to severe heat for those over 65 than the norm.
There were more individuals in areas where climate-sensitive illnesses can thrive. In the last decade, coastal regions warm enough for the unpleasant Vibrio bacteria have expanded in the Baltics, the US Northeast, and the Pacific Northwest. Since the 1950s, the malaria-spreading mosquito season has grown in several impoverished countries.
“Code Red isn’t even a hot enough hue for this report,” said Dr. Michele Barry of Stanford University’s Department of Tropical Medicine, who wasn’t part of the research team. “This one is the sobering awareness that we’re heading entirely in the wrong way,” says the author, referring to the last Lancet study.
According to the research, 65 of the 84 nations subsidies the use of fossil fuels, which contribute to climate change. Dr. Richard Jackson, a UCLA public health professor who wasn’t involved in the study, described it as “caring for the terribly ill patient while someone is offering them lighted cigarettes and junk food.”
