The Impacts of Climate Change on Health

5/29/2018

Guest Author

Adriane Horn, earning a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Engineering

The Impacts of Climate Change on Your Health

We are currently living in the Anthropocene epoch. This probably means nothing to you but allow me to explain its significance.

The Anthropocene epoch is denoted as the geological period in which human activity has had the greatest impact on climate and the environment. This literally means that our geological age is named after how much we influence the climate and the environment!

Unfortunately, this prodigious influence does not mean good things for the human population or our home planet. Between the exponentially growing population and the constant demand for more goods and services, we are fast approaching the earth’s speculated carrying capacity despite major advances in technology.

It impacts the health and quality of life for people of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Like it or not, this is actually one thing we all have to fight together, simply because it is a problem we have caused, and deal with, together.

What is Climate Change

The Webster Dictionary definition of climate change is:

A change in global or regional climate patterns, in particular a change apparent from the mid to late 20th century onwards and attributed largely to the increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide produced by the use of fossil fuels.

We have all heard about greenhouse gases and how they trap heat, causing the Earth’s overall temperature to rise and the ice caps to melt.

Well, I don’t know about any of you, but I have yet to feel any temperature increases because I’m still freezing and it’s May.

That is because climate change encompasses more than the warming of the planet. It also accounts for the extreme weather changes seen across the globe.

Think droughts, wildfires, hurricane clusters, and so on. Climate change basically means that the weather we typically experience on an annual basis is on steroids and hits much harder than normal.

Why Should we care

Aside from the fact that the weather is more hot and cold (literally and figuratively), and can become uncommonly nasty, climate change poses significant health threats as well.

There are countless ways climate change can affect human health, but a few significant causes include:

1. Spread of disease

During the winter bugs usually either die, migrate, or hibernate. So, when the sun comes back around so do the bugs.

Since certain insects need certain conditions to survive, the changing climate may attract foreign bugs to places that never hosted that species before, and, like the Europeans did with the Native Americans, they can introduce unprepared humans to nasty diseases like West Nile virus and Lyme disease.

2. Poor farming conditions

Farming is a surprisingly tricky and tedious process, even for the pros.

If the conditions are not right, problems like mold, pests, weeds, drought, and nutrient deficiency can cause yield to go down and the price of the product to go up.

Sadly, even without this barrier, many people do not have enough money to feed their family fresh produce as is, so they turn to processed or fast food, ultimately depleting their health.

3. Overall Quality of Life

Not only does eating unhealthy make you feel tired, affect your mood, and make your joints hurt, but your air quality, nearby recreation, and economy can suffer as well.

It is important to avoid processed foods for this reason, but also because the manufacturing of them is not helping the environment at all. For example, when no trees grow because the ground is littered with heavy metal debris from an open pit mine or you can’t see the nearby mountains because the smog is too thick, your quality of life goes down and your health along with it.

With this in mind, climate change needs to be a priority for global leaders, and unfortunately it would seem Mr. Trump does not care enough at this time, let alone believe it's even true. Perhaps it's not good for business.

What You Can Do

As you may know there are countless things you can do to decrease your carbon footprint. Yet, the crown jewel of pollution prevention is source reduction.

Recycling and reusing items is great, but it still requires energy to break down and separate recycled products into another usable form. Therefore, reducing consumption at the source is really the best way to prevent personal materialistic pollution and also, indirectly, help prevent fossil fuel consumption expelled during the manufacturing of the product.

1. Reusable bags

Have you ever stopped to think about how many plastic bags one store goes through in a day and then multiply that by how many stores there are like that in the world?

It’s hard to wrap your mind around, but to give you an idea the U.S. uses about 100 billion plastic bags per year. We can easily cut out about 350-500 of those bags per person by using reusable bags for groceries, and even produce.

Up your conservation game and check out these nifty mesh bags that have draw strings and they are easy to machine wash! You can even store your veggies in them in the fridge.

2. Avoid packaged, processed foods

Now I want you to take a moment and think about what makes up most of your trash. I don’t know about you, but most of my trash consists of packaging.

Some packaging is necessary of course, but the foods that we should really be eating don't need man-made packaging because it comes in a natural package. Think skin, like on apples, bananas, oranges, and grapes.

Some veggies and fruits may not come in a “natural package”, and yes, the fruit packaging companies coat most fruit in an edible wax, but the good news is there are special fruit washes out there to help you with that exact problem!

You can also try a homemade cleaner to get your produce nice and clean by soaking it in a baking soda-water solution for a little bit and then rinsing it.

Conclusion

Help yourself and other people we share our beautiful planet with by implementing some of these methods. The world thanks you!

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References

“Ditch Your Plastic! 25 Reasons to Use Reusable Grocery Shopping Bags.” ReuseThisBag.com, 30 July 2018, www.reusethisbag.com/articles/25-reasons-to-go-reusable/.

Earth Policy Institute. (2014). Plastic Bags Fact Sheet. Retrieved from http://www.earth-policy.org/images/uploads/press_room/Plastic_Bags.pdf

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