Skip to main content

Environment and Human Health

Image
By

With leaders of over 190 countries discussing global climate in Paris this month, unprecedented floods wrecking havoc in Chennai since last week, smog engulfing the Chinese capital Beijing right now, and air quality charts of Delhi showing that the air we are breathing is choking our lungs and hearts, I would have to be quite an ostrich to write about any other health issue this week.

The health consequences of the Chennai floods that have killed over 200 people is just the tip; what is of greater concern is the wave of infections especially diarrrhoeal diseases, typhoid, pneumonias, malaria, dengue, skin infections and stress that are to follow. Further the floods have devastated the lives of several million and sent shivers down our spines by reminding us that some freak natural disaster could usurp our lives just as it did to Uttarakhand a couple of years ago.

One of the core issues is the amount of green-house gases emitted in to the atmosphere due to the use of fossil fuels such as coal, diesel, kerosene, petrol and CNG. This topic makes headlines and forms the top item in the agenda for inter-governmental discussions. These gases comprising carbon dioxide and methane, warm up the climate, making ice caps melt, that in turn push up sea levels and unusual weathers causing untimely heavy rains and floods.

Another issue is air-pollution and the effect it has on our lungs and hearts. “People think the talks are about protecting the environment, plants, animals,” explained Dr Maria Neira, Director of Public Health and the Environment Department at the World Health Organisation, during a sessions in Paris recently. “But it’s as much about human health”

Some of the effects of climate change that can affect our health are strikingly apparent. During the recent Beijing smog for instance, the air quality index that measures small particulate matter was 611 (a value above 300 means that the entire exposed population is at risk of ‘serious’ health effects) forcing the Chinese government to shut schools and some of its factories. And the air in Delhi has been reported to be 5 times worse at 2000 and we are still going about our lives in our “bindaas” ways!

Particles in the air we breathe enter our lungs and cause chest congestion, cough, asthma and breathlessness. In the long term they can also cause lung cancers, often seen in women who use fossil fuels for their ‘chulhas” or stoves in closed kitchens.
Particles that are smaller than 2.5 microns are called “small particles” and can be even more dangerous. They can enter the bloodstream from the the respiratory tracts and reach all parts of our body. They can damage small blood vessels causing injury to heart and brain, and can also cause a variety of cancers.

The number of health issues linked to climate change are too many to enumerate.
And while global climate has indeed changed through the earth's history, what is making the present crisis unique is that it is our “behaviour” that is causing the trouble this time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more