Just as a small parenthesis. I
want to address attention to food supply that can be considered a health risk.
Note 1: WHO defined health as a
comprehensive concept including not only the absence of illnesses but a general
well-being, in this sense lack of food is a serious threat to it.
The extreme heat not only
affects humans directly, it also does indirectly by affecting animals and
plants, the sources of humans’ food.
Wheeler et al.
say that climate change could affect food supply, they found a clear trend of
climate change affecting productivity, meaning less production per hectare. I
think this could have 2 immediate effects: less availability of food (implying scarcity
and rise in prices) and second the need for extend the cultivated surface or the
use of more and more chemicals to get the same yield, i.e. worsening climate
change issue.
What about milk? Vitali found that heat waves
increase mortality rate in dairy cows over 29 month-old.
What about poultry? A negative effect again in
the production, quality of eggs and safety.
Note
2: Who are the major meat
producers in the world? USA, Brazil, EU (47% of total)
And wheat? Nuttal
et al. found reduction in productivity of 13% in case of heat-wave in
Australia under certain conditions.
And water? Reduction in the
available fresh water with all the direct health implications.
In few words apart from the direct
effects on health of climate change, there are also a number of indirect ones,
making a very complex web.
Getting back to heat.
There is a very interesting
article by Lundgren
about heat and mitigation, she exposed that there are a number of technological
measures for reducing the consequences of heat stress/waves in workers but
those measures would not be available in developing countries for economic
reason, she also exposes the topic of productivity reduction due to the heat,
that again and due to the economic reason, cannot be mitigated in poor countries
as properly as in developed ones increasing the economic differences.
On the other hand Xiang doing investigation
in South Australia, found that the rate of working accidents has a maximum at
about maximum daily temperature of 38°C but it is reduced in extremely hot
days, except for works related to electricity, water and gas where the rate
shows a sine shape increasing after around 36°. Of course the accidents rate
affects productivity, what affects economic growth and financial capacity for
facing climate problems.
As the issue is already present
and could last a long time, what can we do to face it? Some of the alternatives
are:
1.
Engineering
solutions for working places and clothing: portable structures providing
shade, air conditioning, water transport, fans, special clothing, frozen gels,
etc.
2.
Permanent
control. Individual monitoring systems, for temperature and heart, medical
permanent vigilance
3.
Urban
design/adaptation: changes in walls colours, increasing vegetation, etc
All of these potential mitigations
are directly linked to economic capacity, maybe this is reflected in my post of
October 28th about a publication of the the Bank
of England in respect of climate change saying that in the short term there
would be no real impact of the climate change in rates of mortality or
morbidity in UK.
