气候变化对人类环境与健康影响

气候变化对环境与健康的影响日益受到关注。该文分析了气候变化对大气环境、水环境和土壤环境的胁迫效应,并概述了气候变化对人体健康直接与间接影响的研究进展,气候变化对人类环境与健康的影响将是今后研究的重点,值得关注。     

全球气候变化对职业人群健康影响

气候变化俨然已成为人类社会在21世纪所要面临的最严峻挑战之一。职业人群由于自身的特殊性,受到气候变化的影响更大,会造成疾病、伤害、甚至死亡,导致工作时间降低、劳动生产率下降等,从而影响社会经济的发展。目前,中国有关气候变化对人群健康影响的研究,主要关注的是普通人群而非职业人群。为提高人们对气候变化与职业健康关联性的认识,本文旨在探讨气候变化影响职业人群健康的暴露因素与影响途径,并在系统回顾国内外相关研究的基础上,对未来职业健康的研究方向和防治措施提出政策性建议。     

全球气候变化对人群健康的潜在影响

本文综述了全球气候变化过程中人类健康所受到的潜在威胁。从热相关死亡率的增高，各种媒介传播疾病和传染病流行趋势的变化，臭氧层耗减导致的皮肤癌，白内障等疾病的增多等各方面阐述了人类健康受到的影响，并提出消除气候改变的原因，改善生存环境的措施。     

气象因素对人群健康影响的研究进展

随着全球气候变化,气温升高及极端气象事件的强度及频率增加严重着威胁人类的生命和健康。本文根据近年国内外的研究进展,综述了气象因素和极端气象事件对人群死亡和发病的影响,并对气象因素健康影响的未来研究提出建议,为相关学者开展研究提供参考。     

气候变化对媒介生物性传染病的影响

近百年来,地球气候经历着前所未有的变化。其对媒介生物传染病的潜在影响也对人类健康造成了巨大的威胁。笔者收集整理了现有相关文献,概述了全球范围内气候变化和气象因素对媒介生物数量和地理分布、病原体生长发育和主要媒介生物性传染病传播的影响。通过分析总结发现,在全球范围内及我国部分地区温度、湿度、降水和风速等气候因子的变异和变化对主要媒介传染病的发生、传播和暴发有着显著的影响。尽管如此,由于气候变化和媒传疾病分布及传播机制改变的关系非常复杂。另外,部分研究结果仍存在空间不一致性,因此需要未来更多的相关研究为适应策略的制定提供有力的科学依据。     

适应气候变化,减少健康危害

气候变化对人类健康已经并将继续造成多方面不利影响,适应气候变化是健康领域应对气候变化的基本策略。本文对主要国际组织、主要国家以及中国应对气候变化对健康影响的适应政策、措施与行动进行综述,并提出综合对策与建议。     

气候变化影响下的医疗卫生部门可持续采购策略

概述了气候变化对人类健康的影响,分析了医疗卫生部门影响气候变化和全球健康的原因,并从资源开采、生产制造、运输分配、使用和废弃管理等方面详细阐述了医疗卫生部门应对气候变化的相关采购策略。     

气候变化对鼠传疾病的影响研究

气候多样性和气候变化对于啮齿类动物传播疾病的潜在影响,相比于蚊类等其他媒介传播的疾病更具不确定性,所受关注也较少。但是鼠类作为一种重要的媒介生物,其传播的疾病比如因携带鼠疫耶尔森菌而引起的鼠疫,对人类健康构成的严重威胁却不容忽视。气候变化影响了鼠类传播传染病宿主、媒介的生长发育,改变了鼠疫等传染病的流行、传播和分布。本文拟对近年来气候变化之下鼠类传染病流行特点的变化做一综述,为公共卫生决策部门制定科学防控措施提供可借鉴经验。     

基于脆弱性的高温热浪人群健康风险评估研究进展

目的全球气候变化是21世纪人类所面临的最严重的环境问题之一,联合国政府间气候变化专门委员会(IPCC)发布预测,由于全球气候变化的影响,21世纪世界范围内的高温热浪事件无论在频率、强度还是持续时间上都将会继续增加,由于高温热浪具有高致病性和高致死性,因此评估及预测未来高温热浪人群健康风险对制定及实施高温热浪预警、预案措施具有重要意义。该文简要介绍了气候变化背景下高温热浪的健康危害,对高温热浪人群健康风险评估技术的研究方法与现状进行了总结和归纳,最后对此方面研究进行了展望。     

环境与生殖健康

环境因素对生殖健康影响的特点表现在人与环境的动态联系过程中,良好的环境对人类健康(包括生殖健康)是有利的,不良的环境对人体健康(包括生殖健康)有潜在的危害。研究环境因素对生殖健康的影响,是关系到几代人及未来民族素质,甚至整个人类前途的重大问题;对贯彻落实我国控制人口数量,提高人口素质的基本国策及我国21     

An approach for assessing human health vulnerability and public health interventions to adapt to climate change

Assessments of the potential human health impacts of climate change are needed to inform the development of adaptation strategies, policies, and measures to lessen projected adverse impacts. We developed methods for country-level assessments to help policy makers make evidence-based decisions to increase resilience to current and future climates, and to provide information for national communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The steps in an assessment should include the following: a) determine the scope of the assessment; b) describe the current distribution and burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; c) identify and describe current strategies, policies, and measures designed to reduce the burden of climate-sensitive health determinants and outcomes; d) review the health implications of the potential impacts of climate variability and change in other sectors; e) estimate the future potential health impacts using scenarios of future changes in climate, socioeconomic, and other factors; f) synthesize the results; and g) identify additional adaptation policies and measures to reduce potential negative health impacts. Key issues for ensuring that an assessment is informative, timely, and useful include stakeholder involvement, an adequate management structure, and a communication strategy.     

Climate variability and change and their potential health effects in small island states: information for adaptation planning in the health sector

Small island states are likely the countries most vulnerable to climate variability and longterm climate change. Climate models suggest that small island states will experience warmer temperatures and changes in rainfall, soil moisture budgets, prevailing winds (speed and direction), and patterns of wave action. El Ni?o events likely will strengthen shortterm and interannual climate variations. In addition, global mean sea level is projected to increase by 0.09-0.88 m by 2100, with variable effects on regional and local sea level. To better understand the potential human health consequences of these projected changes, a series of workshops and a conference organized by the World Health Organization, in partnership with the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme, addressed the following issues: the current distribution and burden of climate-sensitive diseases in small island states, the potential future health impacts of climate variability and change, the interventions currently used to reduce the burden of climate-sensitive diseases, additional interventions that are needed to adapt to current and future health impacts, and the health implications of climate variability and change in other sectors. Information on these issues is synthesized and key recommendations are identified for improving the capacity of the health sector to anticipate and prepare for climate variability and change in small island states.     

Impact of climate change on health: what is required of climate modellers?

The potential impacts of climate change on human health are significant, ranging from direct effects such as heat stress and flooding, to indirect influences including changes in disease transmission and malnutrition in response to increased competition for crop and water resources. Development agencies and policy makers tasked with implementing adaptive strategies recognize the need to plan for these impacts. However at present there is little guidance on how to prioritize their funding to best improve the resilience of vulnerable communities. Here we address this issue by arguing that closer collaboration between the climate modelling and health communities is required to provide the focused information necessary to best inform policy makers. The immediate requirement is to create multidisciplinary research teams bringing together skills in both climate and health modelling. This will enable considerable information exchange, and closer collaboration will highlight current uncertainties and hopefully routes to their reduction. We recognize that climate is only one aspect influencing the highly complex behaviour of health and disease issues. However we are optimistic that climate-health model simulations, including uncertainty bounds, will provide much needed estimates of the likely impacts of climate change on human health.     

Climate change, air quality, and human health

Weather and climate play important roles in determining patterns of air quality over multiple scales in time and space, owing to the fact that emissions, transport, dilution, chemical transformation, and eventual deposition of air pollutants all can be influenced by meteorologic variables such as temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and mixing height. There is growing recognition that development of optimal control strategies for key pollutants like ozone and fine particles now requires assessment of potential future climate conditions and their influence on the attainment of air quality objectives. In addition, other air contaminants of relevance to human health, including smoke from wildfires and airborne pollens and molds, may be influenced by climate change. In this study, the focus is on the ways in which health-relevant measures of air quality, including ozone, particulate matter, and aeroallergens, may be affected by climate variability and change. The small but growing literature focusing on climate impacts on air quality, how these influences may play out in future decades, and the implications for human health is reviewed. Based on the observed and anticipated impacts, adaptation strategies and research needs are discussed.     

Population health needs beyond ratifying the Kyoto Protocol: a look at occupational deprivation

The dramatic impact of climate change is physically and economically affecting the world, a consequence of neglecting scientific information known since the 1960s and 1970s. International discussion has focused on the needs of the physical environment and general health concerns (such addressing greenhouse gas production and population health issues); however, little acknowledgement has yet been made of local human issues, such as the effect of climate change on the mental health of those in rural communities. This commentary takes an occupational science perspective to describe new ways of classifying potential mental health problems associated with climate change and its impact on the rural environment. It challenges policy makers to take a proactive approach to addressing the current impacts of climate change on the future mental health of individuals in rural communities.     

Assessing ozone-related health impacts under a changing climate

Climate change may increase the frequency and intensity of ozone episodes in future summers in the United States. However, only recently have models become available that can assess the impact of climate change on O3 concentrations and health effects at regional and local scales that are relevant to adaptive planning. We developed and applied an integrated modeling framework to assess potential O3-related health impacts in future decades under a changing climate. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Institute for Space Studies global climate model at 4 degrees x 5 degrees resolution was linked to the Penn State/National Center for Atmospheric Research Mesoscale Model 5 and the Community Multiscale Air Quality atmospheric chemistry model at 36 km horizontal grid resolution to simulate hourly regional meteorology and O3 in five summers of the 2050s decade across the 31-county New York metropolitan region. We assessed changes in O3-related impacts on summer mortality resulting from climate change alone and with climate change superimposed on changes in O3 precursor emissions and population growth. Considering climate change alone, there was a median 4.5% increase in O3-related acute mortality across the 31 counties. Incorporating O3 precursor emission increases along with climate change yielded similar results. When population growth was factored into the projections, absolute impacts increased substantially. Counties with the highest percent increases in projected O3 mortality spread beyond the urban core into less densely populated suburban counties. This modeling framework provides a potentially useful new tool for assessing the health risks of climate change.     

Comments on the process and product of the health impacts assessment component of the national assessment of the potential consequences of climate variability and change for the United States

In 1990 Congress formed the U.S. Global Change Research Program and required it to conduct a periodic national assessment of the potential impacts of climate variability and change on all regions and select economic/resource sectors of the United States. Between 1998 and 2000, a team of experts collaborated on a health impacts assessment that formed the basis for the first National Assessment's analysis of the potential impacts of climate on human health. The health impacts assessment was integrated across a number of health disciplines and involved a search for and qualitative expert judgment review of data on the potential links between climate events and population health. Accomplishments included identification of vulnerable populations, adaptation strategies, research needs, and data gaps. Experts, stakeholders, and the public were involved. The assessment is reported in five articles in this issue; a summary was published in the April 2000 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives. The assessment report will enhance understanding of ways human health might be affected by various climate-associated stresses and of the need for further empirical and predictive research. Improved understanding and communication of the significance and inevitability of uncertainties in such an assessment are critical to further research and policy development.     

Constraints and barriers to public health adaptation to climate change: a review of the literature

Public health adaptation to climate change is an important issue and inevitably is needed to address the adverse health impacts of climate change over the next few decades. This paper provides an overview of the constraints and barriers to public health adaptation and explores future research directions in this emerging field. An extensive literature review was conducted in 2010 and published literature from 2000 to 2010 was retrieved. This review shows that public health adaptation essentially can operate at two levels, namely, adaptive-capacity building and implementation of adaptation actions. However, there are constraints and barriers to public health adaptation arising from uncertainties of future climate and socioeconomic conditions, as well as financial, technologic, institutional, social capital, and individual cognitive limits. The opportunities for planning and implementing public health adaptation are reliant on effective strategies to overcome these constraints and barriers. It is proposed here that high research priority should be given to multidisciplinary research on the assessment of potential health impacts of climate change, projections of health impacts under different climate and socioeconomic scenarios, identification of health co-benefits of mitigation strategies, and evaluation of cost-effective public health adaptation options.