Environmental Health: Global Warming - Definition, Information, Facts and Effects

Definition of Global Warming: What is it?

• Global warming is a common term used excessively in the public arena. Therefore, there are a multiple meanings of this term and they frequently can produce some confusion among us.  A general meaning for global warming is:
• Global warming is the phenomenon seen in recent years of increasing temperatures in the all the world. The reason of this temperature increments are due the contaminating emissions gases that trapped the sunrays in the atmosphere and produce the greenhouse effect. The contaminating gases are by products of human and industrial activity.

How does the global warming can affect our health?

• The global warming can affect our health in many ways. The most common health problems reported and caused by climate change are:
• Respiratory problems
• Allergies
• Cardiovascular problems
• Infectious diseases problems
• Spreading of tropical diseases to higher latitudes
• Contamination related health problems
• Respiratory problems
• Asthma is a severe respiratory disease that its frequency had increased with the increment of the world temperature. Many scientists and doctors, as well as other researchers, had found that: there is a clear relation between the higher temperature at my neighborhood and the higher incidence of people suffering asthma. How can this be produced? Well, the scientists say that a hotter home can produce a series of biochemical reactions in our bodies.  These biochemical reactions produce compounds that are related with the initiation of asthma attacks. Scientists also had identified the appearance of more frequent chronic obstructive pulmonary disease deaths related with global warming.
• Allergies
• The increased of allergies in our society is seen has an effect of global warming. The scientists say that major pollen spreading is affecting wider global areas. The more intense and prolonged spring and summer temperatures can explain this widening of pollen spreading. In addition, these prolonged seasons are directly related with the climate change. This also means that for many persons the acute allergies have passed to chronic allergies.
• Cardiovascular problems
• Cardiovascular disease have incremented by two major factors: the high fat diet and the global warming. How can this be produced?  Statistics say that when in places that there are hotter wave episodes there are a major frequency of cardiovascular induced deaths. In the summer of 2003, there was a heat wave in Europe that killed nearly three thousands persons only in France. The cardiovascular deaths were the most common reason.

Increasing of infectious diseases outbreaks

• Global warming is producing dangerous outbreaks in Africa, India and East Asia. We remember the SARS outbreaks in the Southeast Asia, especially in Honk Kong and Perkin, where this inoffensive virus could mute and spread to all directions as fast as commercial flights. Many scientists have alerted the government authorities that the increased temperatures have helped a faster spreading of this and possible future outbreaks.
• Other cases support this theory like the rare outbreak of normally tropical zones diseases as malaria and dengue in higher latitude zones. Could we expect outbreaks of dengue or malaria in North Dakota or Paris in a near future? This can be perfectly a new reality and a new health challenge to the industrialized countries.

Contamination and Global Warming

• The greenhouse effect gases are provoking the fast increment in temperature of the planet. This means that the sea’s temperature is also rising rapidly. Therefore, the well-equilibrated marine ecosystems are suffering a tremendous stress that potentially can destroy them forever. For the human beings this means that we are losing species that could help us in many was like to cure mortal diseases. Therefore, the global warming definitively is a major challenge for our own health and the next generations.

Global warming is the increased of temperature due to human factors. This environmental problem had several consequences for our health.