Children, the elderly and the poor are much more vulnerable to health impacts than the rest of the population. Children's metabolic rates are higher, so they naturally breathe faster resulting in greater intake of polluted air. Children are also at risk before they are even born. Exposure to pollutant carrying polen of pregnant women increases the likelyhood that their child will have asthma. Additionally, children's bodies are at much greater risk of dehydratation.
Scientists are working to identify the effects of a changing climate and in particular of a carbon pollution of individual people, but the web of relationships between particules and human health is very complex and more research is needed.
Here are some key health risks from climate:
- more than doubled asthma rates and lenghthened asthma season (20 days longer)
- threatened access to clean drinking water
- increases in airborne and insectborne illnesses
- increases in diarrheal, respiratory and heart disease
- increased risk of salmonella spread as average temperatures rise
- increase in hospital use results in rising health care costs
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