A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has evaluated public health data from the last 20 years, discovering a number of aspects that are being negatively affected (and will be exacerbated) by climate change. There is already a general consensus that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation are contributing to climate change, but how will this affect our health in the future?
A team of researchers from the Institute of Global Health at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) has carried out a comparative work collecting data from 56 articles in medical journals referring to the health impact of climate change and also analyzed air temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climate Data Center, making predictions with more than 13 different climate models .
The results of the study have revealed that cities such as New York or Milwaukee (USA) will reach extreme heat temperatures very frequently in the year 2050 . This extreme heat will cause problems such as:
Respiratory disorders , with an added danger for asthma and allergic diseases.
Infectious diseases , including those transmitted by insects or by water.
Food insecurity , as crops will decrease their yields and plant diseases will increase.
Mental health disorders , such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, both associated with natural disasters.
