A comprehensive assessment of scientific literature has uncovered empirical evidence that more than 58% of human diseases caused by pathogens, such as dengue, hepatitis, pneumonia, malaria, Zika and more, have been—at some point—aggravated by climatic hazards.
A comprehensive assessment of scientific literature has uncovered empirical evidence that more than 58% of human diseases caused by pathogens, such as dengue, hepatitis, pneumonia, malaria, Zika and more, have been—at some point—aggravated by climatic hazards. That eye-opening and startling finding is the topic of a research paper published on August 8 in Nature Climate Change by a team of researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
The researchers carried out a systemic search for empirical examples about the impacts of 10 climatic hazards sensitive to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions on each known human pathogenic disease. These hazards included warming, drought, heatwaves, wildfires, extreme precipitation, floods, storms, sea level rise, ocean biogeochemical change, and land cover change.
Combining two authoritative lists of all known infections and pathogenic diseases that have affected humanity in recorded history, researchers then reviewed more than 70,000 scientific papers for empirical examples about each possible combination of a climatic hazard impacting each of the known diseases.
Read more at: University of Hawaii at Manoa
