Collection 2, Climate change and its impacts

Collection 2, Climate change and its impacts

A collection on climate change and its impacts with an emphasis on health

Research articles

Epidemic of heat-related illnesses among workers exposed to hot working environments in the changing climate scenario

Vidhya Venugopal, PK Latha, Tord Kjellstrom, Rebekah Lucas, Kristina Jakobsson, Jason Glaser, Seichi Horie, Marvin González-Quiroz, Sandra Peraza, Ilana Weiss, David Wegman, Theo Bodin, Cathrina Wessling, Hannu Rintamaki and Sirkka Rissanen

Rising global temperatures, coupled with decreasing access to clean drinking water, may enhance the effects of heat exposure to general and working populations across the globe. People working in jobs that require moderate or heavy manual labor in hot environments are at particular risk caused by the combined effect of exposures to high environmental heat and internal heat production. Exposures to heat can lead to a range of clinical health effects such as fatigue, exhaustion, heat syncope, fainting, heat stroke…

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Sea level under climate change: Understanding the links between the past and the future

Keven Roy, Nicole S. Khan, Timothy A. Shaw, Robert E. Kopp and Benjamin P. Horton

Rising global sea level, a consequence of climate change, results from an increase in the world ocean’s water volume and mass. Recent climate warming is responsible for producing the highest rate of global average sea-level rise of the past few millennia, and this rate will accelerate through the 21st century and beyond, exposing low-lying islands and coastal regions to significant flood risks. The flood risks can be compounded or diminished locally because changes in sea level are not uniform. In…

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Rising carbon dioxide is decreasing nutrition in crops and endangering health among the less wealthy

Matthew Smith and Samuel S Myers

Carbon dioxide levels are rising globally. The increasing CO2 levels reduce the concentration of nutrients in many of the crops that are consumed worldwide (wheat, rice, barley, maize, legumes, and potatoes). The larger effects for human health are concentrated in regions that heavily rely on these crops for their nutrition such as South and Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East. Because these effects are likely to be hidden, we should better monitor the nutritional status of populations as…

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Heat stress and inadequate toilet access at work places in India – a potential hazard to working women in a changing climate

Vidhya Venugopal, Rekha Shanmugam, Priscilla Johnson, Rebekah Ann Isabel Lucas and Kristina Jakobsson

In the past few decades, increasingly blistering heat due to climate change has created more illnesses and claimed more lives worldwide, an issue mostly ignored because it’s an invisible hazard and hard-to-document disaster. Victims are usually vulnerable populations, including workers exposed on a daily basis to heat, who not only suffer from heat illnesses but also from an exacerbation of existing health problems aggravated by heat and dehydration. Research has proved that heat is a higher risk for female workers,…

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Will climate change worsen your health?

Joan Ballester

Nearly 8% of deaths in Europe are due to ambient temperatures, and global warming represents an additional threat for public health. Despite the fact that we expect more frequent, intense and persistent heat waves during the present century, it is actually not clear whether the number of attributable deaths will also increase. Here I discuss why the role of early adaptation to temperature rise is a major ongoing research topic in science and policy-making, and how these eventual acclimatization processes…

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The impact of climate change will hit urban dwellers first – Can green infrastructure save us?

Rüdiger Grote

Two phenomena that can cause large numbers of premature human deaths have gained attention in the last years: heat waves and air pollution. These two effects have two things in common: They are closely related to climate change and they are particularly intense in urban areas. Urban areas are particular susceptible to these impacts because they can store lots of heat and have little opportunity for cooling off (also known as the urban heat island effect). In order to mitigate…

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Increasing heat creates hardship for brick kiln workers in Chennai, India and the alternative pathways reducing it

Karin Lundgren Kownacki, Siri M. Kjellberg, Pernille Goosh, Marwa Dabaieh and Vidhya Venugopal

Climate change brings new burdens to people working outdoors. Migrant populations working at brick kilns in India are one such group facing dangerously overheated working conditions. Many migrate to the kilns from rural areas under bonded labor conditions. We argue that solutions need to go beyond industry-oriented technology-based solutions and focus on the social problem and take a people focused stance. In addition to adopting more locally appropriate technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and heat in the work environment,…

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