Global Warming Poses Health Threats

Global warming not only poses significant threats to the Earth's ecology, it may also unleash unprecedented health risks, experts say.

On Friday, an international panel of scientists released a report predicting that global warming due to greenhouse-gas emissions will continue for centuries, no matter what's done to check pollution. The result will be killer heat waves, devastating droughts, rising sea levels and fiercer storms.

Saying it was acting with 90 percent confidence, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change of the United Nations said carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced by human activity are the main cause of the global warming that has taken place since 1950.

Michael A. McGeehin, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects, said, "There are some health effects from climate change that we are comfortable in predicting. We will see an increase in the intensity, duration and frequency of heat waves around the world. We will see more severe precipitation events, both heavy rainfall and severe droughts."

That flooding and drought with bring attendant health problems, McGeehin said. "There are health effects secondary to flooding, such as contaminated water supplies, that could result in the spread of infectious diseases," he said.

from the Washington Post