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Health Impacts Of Global Warming

‘The Implications For Health In Global Warming’

This essay will discuss global warming and the degree to which it will negatively affect people’s health and well being. Negative global warming related health effects will vary greatly due to geographical location and socio-economic status. Generally developed countries will be far better placed to confront the health challenges of climate change, than the developing word that already experiences a lower average state of health and less developed infrastructure.

Global warming refers to the measurable increase of average global air temperatures over the century (1905 to 2005). The 2001 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C) concluded that since the mid nineteenth century, that there has been an increase in average global temperature of approximately 0.6 percent and that most of this increase occurred during the end of the twentieth century. Further to this the I.P.C.C. projected global temperature rises of between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees celcius by the year 2100. The predominant theory explaining this rise in global average temperatures is human activity, particularly the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels. The effect of climate change on human health will be varied according to geographical location and the vulnerability of the local population. Potential adverse health consequences include but are not limited to temperature related illness and death, extreme weather related health effects, air pollution health effects, water and food born diseases, vector and rodent born diseases, effects relating to food and water shortages and mental health implications.(Sunyer & Grimalt, 2006 & McMichael et al, 2003).

The European summer of 2003 was potentially the hottest in five hundred years. Average temperatures were 3.5 degrees celcius above average resulting in approximately 22 000 to 35 000 heat related deaths. Causal links have been established between global warming...