Assignment: Global Climate Change and Health

Global Climate Change and Health
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Global Climate Change and Health
Climate change has presented world leaders with a great problem and remains one of the greatest global concerns. Activities of humans such as burning of fossils have led to release of large quantities of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide and they have resulted in trapping of heat at the lower part of the atmosphere (Nelson et al., 2014). The consequence has been a great effect on the climate. The world is getting warmer by decade and sea-levels have been on the rise. Additionally precipitation patterns continue to change as glaciers melt each day. Today, there are more intense and frequent weather events. The climate change has had several health concerns including cardiovascular diseases as a result of extreme temperature and increased asthma attacks as a result of poor air quality (Nelson et al., 2014).
According to Turner et al. (2012), extreme temperatures are known to cause increase in mortality rates across the globe. The authors assert there were close to 70,000 heat related deaths in Europe in 2003. Even though previous research have failed to ascertain that heat had effect on cardiovascular morbidity, Turner et al. (2012) established that heat waves are responsible for some of the most recent cardiovascular hospitalizations. However, the researchers established that cold spells contributed to more cardiovascular hospitalizations as compared to heat waves. The researchers noted that temperature effect on cardiovascular morbidity was small as opposed to the way other findings in the past had established.
D’amato et al. (2015) argued that it is difficult to gauge the effect that quality of air has on the prevalence of asthma especially as a result climate change. However, the authors note that there is has been a global rise in asthma compared to the past could be attributed to climate change. The authors note that over the past few years, asthma has increased in severity and prevalence and this can be attributed to climate change. The authors note that since there is normally an contemporaneous increase of air pollutants and allergens in the atmosphere, increased inflammation of the air can lead to an increase in asthma and respiratory allergies.
In the U.S, cardiovascular disease is responsible for close to 610,000 deaths annually. This implies that for every four deaths that take place in the U.S annually, 1 is as a result of cardiovascular disease, making it the biggest cause of deaths. In Canada, cardiovascular disease is the number two leading cause of annual deaths within the country. The disease claims close to 33,600 lives ever...