From the COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY’S MAILMAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH and the “say anything” department.
Young children are far more vulnerable to climate-related disasters and the onus is on adults to provide the protection and care that children need, according to research by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center. In a paper published in PLoS Medicine, researchers set out some specific challenges associated with the impacts of climate change on the world’s 2.3 billion children and suggest ways to address their underprioritized needs.
“Because of their anatomic, cognitive, immunologic, and psychologic differences, children and adolescents are more vulnerable to climate change-related events like floods, droughts, and heatwaves than adults,” says Madeleine Thomson, PhD, a research scholar in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, faculty member at Columbia’s Earth Institute, a guest editor in PLOS One Medicine’s Special Issue on Climate Change and Health in the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.
Because of their small surface-to-body ratio, infants and children are particularly vulnerable to dehydration and heat stress. During heat waves, children are more likely to be affected by respiratory disease, kidney disease, electrolyte imbalance, and fever. Heat waves have also been shown to exacerbate allergens and air pollution which impact children more severely than adults because of their underdeveloped respiratory and immune systems and because they breathe at a faster rate than adults.
The authors write that hotter temperatures may also expand the range of vector-borne diseases, including the Zika virus which, following the 2015 epidemic, has profoundly affected the lives of children and their families across Latin America and the Caribbean. Even children who were asymptomatic at birth may develop problems later in life.
After Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico in September 2017 medical responders encountered increases in gastroenteritis, asthma exacerbations and skin infections. Children were also at increased risk for mosquito-borne diseases such as Chikungunya and Dengue, as well as leptospirosis through the drinking of contaminated water. Flood waters from Hurricane Harvey a few weeks earlier dropped record breaking rain. Most of the Harvey-related toxic releases were never publicized and the long-term implications for children’s health is unknown. Studies suggest that climate change is increasing the intensity of North Atlantic hurricanes and the likelihood that the severe consequences for children’s health will grow.
In rural households droughts can have significant impacts on child development through increased food insecurity and dietary changes [17]. Droughts may also contribute to conflict and forced migration in resource poor settings, thereby increasing children’s vulnerability to a wide range of health issues.
To begin to address the specific needs of children confronted with climate-change related health disasters, Thomson and colleagues are proposing the following:
- Establish an international consortium of experts to develop adoptable medical and behavioral protocols and to set research agendas to address the unmet child specific needs that arise from climate-related natural disasters.
- Develop best practice guidelines for climate-change related event planning that incorporates strategies for addressing the health-related needs of children.
- Fund mechanisms designed to help the most vulnerable nations prepare for and respond to climate related disasters must consider funding the development of responses that specifically address the unmet needs of children’s health.
###
Co-authors are Lawrence Stanberry, Columbia Department of Pediatrics; Wilmot James, Columbia Department of Pediatrics and School of International and Public Affairs.
It just gets stupider and stupider. Darwin is dead, slashed and burned. Evolution is impossible now. We are all doomed.
I wish to register a Complaint with a gross oversight that has been committed in this article, as it is clear to all that obviously Female Children and Minority Children will by far more at risk than White Male Children.
The biggest threat to the children of the world, by far, is the effects of *poverty*. Extreme weather events (which have always occurred in human history and cannot be prevented) is vastly less dangerous to developed countries who can afford to adapt. Adopting expensive and ineffective mitigation strategies and discouraging fossil-fueled development is actively counterproductive if your only motivation is the welfare of children.
“Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health”
I am appalled by Columbia University’s sexism. They should change the name of the school of public health to: “Columbia University’s Postal Worker School of Public Health”
or, Letter Carrier…
POVERTY — It is the children of poverty that are hurt by any and all adverse social, political and weather events. Substituting the words “climate-change related health disasters” doesn’t change make a difference in either the event — a flood, a drought, a heat-wave, a hard cold winter — or the outcome. Poor children and the elderly poor are always the worst hit. The physiological reasons for this are clearly stated in the abstract — the social and political reasons are ignored — and the true causes of both the events themselves (weather) and the causes of the effects (mostly politics reinforcing poverty) are totally ignored as if they didn’t exist.
There ought to be dedicated Children’s Welfare representatives on every disaster relief planning team — money should be specially earmarked for children’s health care, nutritional supplements, children’s recovery foods (such as Plumpy’nut.)
The rest of the paper rests on the mis-understoods of the IPCC — that African droughts are caused by climate change and that hurricanes in Florida and Texas are climate-change driven, etc..
Yes, when sanitation breaks down, when mosquito control stops, when natural disaster happens, children are the most vulnerable. Yet climate warming has nothing to do with any of the three.
There is NO evidence that climate change has increased the spread on any arthropod vectored diseases since WWII or will it happen in the future. What appear to be so called “emerging” diseases have been around a long time affecting human populations where those diseases have been endemic, e.g., Zika, Chikungunya, etc. They have been spread by modern rapid travel, in the case of Zika it was the World Cup and African nations traveling to Brazil with large populations of the primary vector.
As for dengue, malaria, and yellow fever those were common diseases throughout the world during from the middle of the 20th Century back through at least the 19th Century. The Romans had to deal with malaria. There were outbreaks in Russia and through large portions of the USA. Yellow fever epidemics took place during the Little Ice Age.
In many third world countries, where sanitation is often optional, children suffer the most from gastrointestinal disorders, many dying before they are four. Gastrointestinal diseases also lead to kidney problems, poor mental development, etc.
Countries with relatively cheap and well developed energy systems based on fossil fuels are the best at avoid all such problems.
The biggest problem Dade County, Florida had in controlling the Zika outbreak there was due to mythologies created and promoted by the greens and those politicians seeking their votes and donations.
This story seems to resurface about once or twice a year. I know that it has been refuted relative to arthropod vectored diseases more than once.
By the by, Puerto Rico, long before the hurricane has faced regular, and sometimes epidemic out breaks of dengue.
Was Pelosi a peer reviewer?
What are ‘climate related natural disasters’? They are droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, heat waves and extreme winter storms and cold events. In other words, they are the same natural disasters that humans have always had to deal with. But ‘regular natural disasters’ do not attract as much funding, attention and career advancement as ‘climate related natural disasters'”
If you want more attention around your particular problem of concern, I would advise anyone to add the words ‘climate change related’ to the description to get more attention and funding. Here are some examples:
Climate change related traffic congestion
Climate change related urban blight
Climate change related social security cutbacks
Climate change related zoning issues
Climate change related college loans
Climate change related health care, especially climate related women’s healthcare
Climate change related abortions
Climate change related anti-semitism
Climate change related me-too incidents
Climate change related glass ceilings
Climate change related inequality
Climate change related racism
Climate change related decline in good music
Climate change related increase in obesity
Climate change related increase in rudeness
Climate change related increase in fake news
Climate change related decline in new ideas from Hollywood
And so on…
When the officer asks why you were driving 20 mph over the speed limit: Climate Change
When you haven’t paid your taxes: Climate Change
When your wife asks you why you didn’t come home until 4 AM: Climate Change
When the boss asks why you are 6 hours late for work: Climate Change
Why you cheated on your spouse: Climate Change
Why you committed any crime you can think of: Climate Change
If it is good enough for Academia, it should be good enough for the rest of us!
If the Republicans win the midterms, it will be proof of the effects of (political) climate change. That would give liberals reason to commit all of the above as antifas.
I remember wading through waist deep floodwaters after Hurricane Betsy struck Southeast Louisiana in 1965. As during Katrina, the water was trapped inside the levee system of New Orleans for some time. I remember seeing catfish swimming on the street where I lived. Somehow I survived.
So where is a mention of the elderly here when it comes to health risks supposedly from CO2 enrichment of the lower troposphere? You would have thought they’d deliver the convenient double-edged, generation-spanning emotional appeal on this.
I believe the disaster relief mentioned should have included DDT spraying and eradicating mosquito breeding sites.
Hmm. Explain, then, why the most fecund populations (not only of humans but also plants and animals) tend to be in the hottest climates. Can’t be that warmer makes for easier living…!!
Let’s get more people together to talk and talk and talk while the real world goes on. I don’t think anyone will be surprised by the final demographic make up of this “international consortium.”