At the Climate Forum of Cities in Moscow, doctors, meteorologists and politicians found out how the changing climate affects our health.
"How to survive on a climatic swing?" - this question was asked at the Climate Forum of Cities just held in Moscow, where one of the main sessions was devoted to climate and health.
Yes, and we often think about it. Head splitting? Of course, from the weather. Right now on the street there is beauty and warmth, but the atmospheric pressure is high, hypertensive patients are not Indian summer, but torment. Allergy sufferers too: when in September +25, everything blooms, as if in spring. And this is a reaction to just one, a pleasant and seemingly harmless anomaly - an unseasonably warm beginning of autumn.
The World Health Organization has officially recognized global warming as a serious health threat.
FALLED, OUTSIDE … GLOBAL WARMING
- The impact of climate on health is difficult to overestimate. This is a problem that none of us can hide from,”said Dorota Yarosinska, head of the Environment for Life and Work program at the WHO European Center for Environment and Health (Germany). - First, there are immediate impacts - as a result of natural disasters, for example.
Natural disasters are indeed increasing in number, and this is actually one of the main dangers of a changing climate. This means that each of us runs the risk of getting into a storm, hurricane, freezing rain, flood, forest fire …
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- Such extreme events mean an increase in injuries! - explains Professor Galina Degteva, director of the Research Institute of Arctic Medicine, Northern State Medical University in Arkhangelsk.
Or you can simply catch a cold, falling into a heavy downpour, and also consider yourself a victim of global warming. After all, record rainfall is also one of its signs.
However, no time for jokes.
- There is also a long-term impact. Chronic diseases that appear decades later. Climate change undermines the human right to health, sums up Dorota Yarosinska.
WE WOULD TAKE THIS WINTER AND CANCEL
- Weather changes greatly affect us. We see this by analyzing the statistics of morbidity and mortality throughout the year, - says Alexey Kiselev-Romanov, Director of the Department of Public Health and Communications of the Ministry of Health. - In winter, both acute diseases and exacerbations of chronic diseases are 10-15% more. Not only in Russia, the same data in Great Britain, France, Portugal. Scientists are still debating which factor is more important. Possibly temperature. Someone says that humidity - there are studies about an increase in the number of thrombosis with high humidity. Or sudden changes in pressure. In fact, everything is very tightly intertwined.
- In summer, the main negative factors are high temperature and concentration of ozone in the air, and in winter, changes in atmospheric pressure, - says Professor Elena Evstafieva, head of the Department of Normal Physiology of the Medical Academy of the Crimean Federal University.
- The cardiovascular system reacts first of all - after the waves of heat and cold there are more strokes and heart attacks. And in the north it is even more noticeable than in the middle lane. Respiratory organs suffer, especially in children - more attacks and complications of bronchial asthma. The hematopoietic system is included in the process: the life expectancy of erythrocytes after waves of heat or cold decreases, this leads to anemia, and as a result, a person gets sick more often, - adds Galina Degteva.
“In a number of cities, including in the north, increased heat waves are causing
human health disorders and additional mortality, and this trend is likely to continue in the near future”, - a quote from the Roshydromet report“On Climate Changes and Their Consequences on the Territory of the Russian Federation”.
The WHO experts say the same: the worst of all is heat waves (they are dangerous primarily for cores) and air pollution in megacities or due to forest fires (people with weak bronchi and lungs are under attack). Pollen and other allergens are also activated in warm weather - so allergy sufferers with asthmatics are among those who do not benefit from global warming.
NOT COMARA SO TICK
Climatologists have warned for a long time: due to warming, insects and rodents, carriers / infections, will breed. The warm water is teeming with microbes, and together with the permafrost, deadly bacteria thaw.
Predictions have come true:
- Earlier, before 1986, there were no ticks in the Arkhangelsk region and even more so in the Arctic zone. And in recent years, cases of tick-borne encephalitis have increased by 30 times, there is even a fatal outcome, - Galina Degteva is not happy.
The same problems with ticks in the Komi Republic. “There has been a gradual progress
to the north of the Crimean hemorrhagic fever , - warn in Roshydromet. At the global level, the most dangerous are malaria mosquitoes: global warming makes all new regions comfortable for them (fortunately, not in Russia). By 2050, 60,000 people each year will fall victim to malaria in these new territories, according to the WHO forecast.
CAN WE BE HEALTHY?
But you will not file a lawsuit against the heavenly office - they say, bad weather tramples on my health rights! What to do?
- Doctors need to explain what climate change is. And they should take this into account when consulting patients, - suggests Dorota Yarosinska. “But first of all we need to improve the air quality. The cleaner the air, the healthier the inhabitants.
There is such a thing. The main way to combat global warming is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Solar and wind energy, electric vehicles, green technologies in industry and all that.
And clean air is a bonus. It is clear that if in a metropolis, instead of cars and buses with exhaust pipes, electric cars are driven around the streets, it will become easier to breathe in such a city. In Moscow, for example, harmful (both for the climate and for humans) emissions have decreased by 21% compared to 2010, Anton Kulbachevsky, head of the Department of Nature Management and Environmental Protection of Moscow, reported at the forum.
If it weren't for global warming, perhaps no one would seriously think about it. Or I would have thought, but not so seriously, to accept the Kyoto Protocols and the Paris Agreements, change the economy and energy of entire countries.
YULIA SMIRNOVA