Impact Of Climate Change On Elder Health
In the upcoming century, it is expected that humans will make great medical advances and our environment will remain the same. It is understood that humans contribute vastly to global warming and as the climate is changing, there will be a negative impact on overall water quality as well as overall air quality. If humans fail to recognize these consequences, they will soon have to deal with many environmental challenges. Older adults are the most vulnerable population when it comes to climate change, because their immune systems and body’s ability to regulate internal temperatures starts to deteriorate the older they get. This article informs readers of the negative health effects, and how serious climate change is becoming.
Global climate change is continuing to rise, which in turn will result in adverse health effects on older adults.
- Living organisms survive by adaptation, and when their environment rapidly changes extension becomes a harsh truth.
- Humans’ technological advances have created a negative impact on natural resources such as water and air.
- Burning fossil fuels, and destroying forests in order to create a manmade world with cities and dams has influenced the earth’s temperature, sea level, and climate and has created a population decline.
Air pollution plays an important role in overall health. There are four main consequences involved with air pollution.
- Air faces include mixtures of both gas and particles.
- Air sources include all the power generating facilities such as coal-fired power plants, nuclear power plants and wind power farms. Also, vehicles and secondary pollutants such as ground-level ozone, acid rain and nutrient enrichment compounds.
- Health consequences include respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and susceptibility to various cancers.
- Environmental consequences from air pollution include damage to growing plants and inhibition of carbon dioxide.
Human activity is contributing to global climate change. According to research from environmentalist Justin Gills, greenhouse gases have increased by a whole seven percent. Due to the greenhouse gas increase, solar energy is unable to escape from earth’s atmosphere, which contributes massively to global warming. Carbon dioxide levels have risen to a level that has not been seen in over 3 million years.
Global warming creates an up rise in natural disasters including storms, heat waves, and droughts which puts older adults at the highest risk and the most vulnerable. Air quality in the U.S. has improved, but unfortunately due to the current rapid rate of climate change, any progress to better air quality that has been made will ultimately reverse creating extreme hazards to public health.
Water quality is another major component that is affected with climate change. Getting water from its natural source to humans for drinking is a complex process. Drinking starts from the source, whether it may be a lake, river, or stream, then travels through either a treatment plant that is used to purify the water for large scale cities, or in small cities, a filtration system attached to a well is used. The water travels up through pipes for consumption, and if they are old the quality of the water is affected. Water quality is affected by global warming due to chemical runoff and oxygen deprivation that degrades not only the quality of the water, but also negatively impacts humans, who depend on water.
Older adults have a weakened immune system therefore they are the most sensitive age cohort to environmental changes. The Central Nervous System is responsible for maintaining homeostasis, but with age it starts to deteriorate causing it to be harder to regulate high internal temperatures. Unregulated high internal temperatures lead to memory loss, confusion, and delirium. When air pollution is measured high, more elderly people are admitted into the hospital for cardiovascular disease, and lung disease. Between 1979-2003 more people died from high environmental temperatures than all natural disasters combined.
Understanding the factors related to climate change in the U.S. is essential for public health and welfare. Air quality and the pollutants measured by the Environmental Protection Agency are a concern due to links related to both cancer and respiratory illnesses. Water quality also plays an important role in climate change because the chemical toxins that worsen the quality affect the ecosystem and humans, who depend on it.
Climate change puts older adults especially at risk because they are physiologically more sensitive to change. Climate change is happening now, happening rapidly, and will create severe weather changes. ii. Increased wildfires are a result of rapid weather changes. Droughts are a result of climate change, especially in the Southwest portion of the country.
Global warming will continue to occur and dramatically affect the health of the elderly. Humans are responsible for the rise of global warming. By 2021, the average global temperature will increase nearly 11.5 degrees. Global warming was created by humans and can be reversed by humans. i. Elected officials ignore the concept of global warming and all health concerns directly related. Carbon emissions could be reduced, but corporations choose to resist the cap and trade policies that would positively affect the environment.
Conclusion
Climate change needs to stop before it creates dramatic health risks for all, but especially older adults. With greenhouse gases on the rise it is imperative Americans start paying more attention to the damage they are doing to the ecosystem. It is difficult to get the government involved, as they appear to be ignoring the theory completely. With the support from U.S. citizens, it is possible to make a difference. Most people do not understand how serious the health effects could be if climate change continues to increase rapidly. It is important that older adults are aware and informed of what their future health status could be if they do not take matters more seriously.
This article was partly beneficial because it put into perspective how serious climate change is starting to become. This article is important for people of all ages, because everybody is constantly aging every day. The article explained what climate change means; the factors related to climate change, and the health effects that are directly related to climate change. Climate change is creating more severe natural disasters with each passing year. Being informed of the health consequences related to a changing ecosystem was shocking. This article did not present the types of resources available or explain what Americans could do to reverse climate change and its negative impact on the world. With the use of the techniques given in the article, the percentage of older adults informed about the danger of climate change will increase, reducing the countries carbon footprint one person at a time.
