The climate changes and health goes away

With tons of news coming in so quickly and drowning us in information, mostly negative, what happened last June in Saudi Arabia during the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is now a distant memory, an insignificant dot in the universe of massacres that descend on us for a moment of extemporaneous emotion and that must immediately be plugged to make room for a new stage in the journey of living. And yet June was just a short time ago, and the death of almost a thousand people due to the record temperatures recorded, is still, unfortunately, terribly current. And also very close to us. Not only because, after all, our Earth is small and nothing is too far away not to concern us, but also because climate change is truly affecting everyone, including Europe.

This is confirmed by a growing number of studies that reveal how several causes of mortality at a continental level are attributable to rising temperatures: yes, global warming also costs human lives, not just biodiversity. And it digs a deeper furrow in inequalities in terms of health and well-being. The report, published in the scientific journal «Lancet Public Health», is the second publication (after the one in 2022) belonging to a study with a certainly not reassuring title: “The Lancet Countdown: Health and Climate Change in Europe”. The research reviewed hundreds of studies regarding the health effects of climate change in Europe, as well as the actions that have been taken in response: the team of researcher Rachel Lowe and colleagues considered 42 indicators, including those related to deaths caused by excessive heat and the spread of infectious diseases, which help to highlight the alarming increase in mortality and morbidity linked to rising temperatures and the proliferation of climate-related diseases. A result that confirms the need for future studies to include a holistic approach regarding the climate-disease nexus. “We cannot treat all these health impacts as isolated episodes, but we need to look at them together to understand how they affect the well-being of the population,” says Ruth Doherty, a climate change and health researcher at the University of Edinburgh.

In particular, some aspects have proven to be particularly relevant. On the one hand, deadly heat: in the twenty-year period 2003-2022, heat-related mortality increased with an average of 17 deaths per 100,000 people, higher in women than in men. Gender disparities could be explained by differences in terms of body heat loss and maximum levels of sweating: women are more at risk after ovulation, when body temperature increases. But another factor could influence, namely the fact that women generally reach a later age than men and older people are more vulnerable, more at risk of loneliness and therefore subject to greater danger.

On the other hand, there are parasites, whose life and multiplication is favored by high temperatures: just think of the spread of ticks (Ixodes ricinus) and therefore the greater risk of contracting Lyme disease or encephalitis (whose consequences range from flu-like symptoms to serious cardiac and neurological complications), but also of a pathogen that is spreading, Leishmania infantum, transmitted to people when the female sandfly (Phlebotomus sp.) bites the human being to feed on blood, usually causing highly debilitating ulcers all over the body and in extreme cases fevers and even fatal enlargements of the liver and spleen. The rise in temperatures creates favorable conditions for their spread, so much so that their area of ​​presence has significantly increased from 2000 to 2010, allowing more reproductive opportunities and sometimes even accelerating the life cycle of the parasite they host.

There is an ever-increasing intersection between research on climate change and the health of Europeans (on a study that examined studies from 1991 to 2022), and 2% of the most recent studies address issues of equality, fairness, and justice, highlighting a substantial gap in research, because to adequately respond to the health impacts of climate change, it is also important to understand which populations are disproportionately affected and therefore most at risk. This is why a drastic stance is needed by European countries, which however apparently have too much to think about (and little desire to act) at the moment.