Saving the planet does a body good
By Jim Snyder - 11/25/09 02:39 PM ET THE HILL'S Energy and Environment Blog
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gases may not just head off catastrophic climate change. They could improve your health too. The medical journal The Lancet has published a _series of articles_ (http://www.thelancet.com/series/health-and-climate-change) on the health benefits associated with activities designed to address global warming. Global warming itself is seen as a threat to human health. It could reduce water supplies and lead to more severe weather patterns like hurricanes, drought and heat waves. But “appropriate mitigation strategies” will themselves have “additional and independent effects on health,” a summary of the series states. For example, replacing inefficient cook stoves in India would reduce indoor air pollution and decrease the incidence of respiratory infections in children younger than 5 years old and chronic respiratory and heart disease in adults 30 years and older. Walking more and driving less, meanwhile, could cut the rates of heart disease, stroke, cancer, dementia and depression. Daniel Carucci, vice president for Global Health of the United Nations Foundation, said the studies, “highlight the importance of the co-benefits of climate change mitigation on health and importantly suggest that the health outcomes of these strategies could be immediate and long lasting.”