There is an urgent need to better calculate the current and future health impact of climate change, since “current estimates are largely outdated and probably inaccurate to a large extent,” warns a study recently published by the medical journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
“We must start to converge towards more precise and justifiable figures, using all the tools at our disposal,” add the British authors.
Current weather-related mortality is dominated by short-term exposure to hot and cold temperatures leading to cardiovascular and respiratory failure, recalls the study carried out at the University of Bristol.
“It has been published in several places around the world that when the temperature increases beyond 95 to 99% of the mean temperature percentile, there is a very clear association with an increase in cardiovascular risk,” commented Dr. Josep Iglesies-Grau, of the Montreal Heart Institute.
Long-term weather conditions, such as heat waves and flooding, can exacerbate mental health problems and facilitate the spread of infectious diseases, the authors say.
The study also warns that long-term exposure to extreme heat can disrupt sleep, and points out that poor sleep quality has been linked to health problems such as cognitive decline, dementia and heart disease. Alzheimer’s.
Multi-year heat stress could exacerbate underlying health problems, such as kidney disease, it added.
Very cold weather, on the other hand, could increase the risk of injuries from falls; contribute to a deterioration in mental health by increasing isolation; and lead to more sedentary behavior, researchers say.
“We are seeing other underestimated health effects, particularly those related to prolonged exposure risks, including heat-related kidney disease, cold-related musculoskeletal health, and infectious diseases from exposure risks. combined,” say the authors, who surveyed around thirty British experts to arrive at their conclusions.
The more we study climate change, the more we discover to what extent they have an impact on health, and not in a positive way, commented the president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment, Doctor Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers.
” In my opinion, [cette étude] is a big warning that tells us that we need to pay more attention to this issue. We won’t be able to say in 15 years that we didn’t know, so we better do our homework today,” she said.
The latest comparable figures available for Quebec, she added, were compiled about ten years ago, at a time when we were not even talking about the impact of events that were making headlines. today, such as forest fires or even floods.
Health care financing is a recurring issue, continued Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers, “but if we want to be consistent, we will have to consider that climate change will influence the demand and necessary supply of health.”
“We absolutely must reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, it is non-negotiable, but it should not be the only measure,” she said. Even if we completely stop greenhouse gases tomorrow morning, average warming will still continue. We will have to find a way to make these issues coexist, and above all to find adequate funding. »
The long-term impact of climate change on our health is less well known, Dr Iglesies-Grau explained, because it would require a colossal amount of data that has not yet been possible to collect.
“And it would also take a bunch of different climate models in different places around the world,” he added. And all that doesn’t exist. »
The British experts who contributed to this study, however, estimated that one of the potential long-term effects of climate change would be a deterioration of what Dr Iglesies-Grau called “an epidemic of loneliness and isolation”, especially in the elderly.
Different studies, he continues, have associated loneliness with cognitive decline and an increase in sedentary lifestyle, as was also observed during the confinement imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
We must now identify the best strategy to confront the situation, said Dr. Iglesies-Grau. Faced with a patient who questions them on this subject, lamented the specialist, “doctors can only give very general advice”.
“It would be interesting to study in the long term whether having good physical condition helps avoid certain (health) problems in the face of long-term exposure to climate change,” he said.
“What are the right recommendations to make? Do the recommendations change in relation to age, in relation to physical activity, as much during an episode of heat or cold as an episode of pollution, as we risk seeing more and more in Canada with forest fires? We really lack information. »