Human activities and their Impact on the Environment

 How the environment influences human health perhaps by natural disasters causing injuries or by chemicals or exposures causing health impacts? Cancers for example, another way to think about this is how do humanity and our growing population influences the environment that we live in and this is another really important framework for thinking about this. Because, we'll see increasingly that the health of those impacts actually have major impacts on our health overall.

Different types of activities that take on new procedures new technologies new construction efforts. The impact of those technologies, new changes will be on the environment that we actually have fairly massive ecological or the ecosystem disruption.  ecosystem disruption is a real concern right when an ecosystem disruption well not only is it bad for animals and plants but it's also bad for us right, because if we don't have these we don't have pollination. If we don't have pollination, we don't have food right.  The ways in which this affects our health are fairly extensive. If we cut down all the trees we get mudslides. If we suddenly have a lot more wildfires and we have particulate matter and we have more asthma right. There’s a wide range of ways in which our influences on the ecosystem have ultimately will impact us now.  When we think about ecosystem impacts, we're having a dramatic effect generally speaking in terms of wildlife. It’s estimated that our rate of extinction is about a thousand to ten thousand times what the natural level would be based upon our knowledge of the fossil record.

We're seeing a huge die out of our huge range of different species largely tuned to the effects of human action.  We also see impacts like effects on different types of Sentinel species. Sentinel species are species that can tell us whether or not different types of chemicals or other types of health and impacts maybe actually are having impacts on humans. For example, frogs  we've seen an upsurge in terms of strange mutations  for frogs probably due to a range of different chemicals that we're putting on to the environment, many of these we don't entirely know. What the cause is and that's an indicator that these species that are very vulnerable to these chemical changes well maybe these are effects that we'll also.

Humans, as well know that increasingly wildlife is being pushed into the margin so, it's just less and less of that wildlife. the estimate that roughly by mass Verta massive vertebrate species on the land humans make up about a third of that mass domesticated animals that feed us make up another two thirds about and wildlife only makes up about five percent of that of that mass.  Increasingly we're centering the entire ecosystem around and that has distinct risks. When we create a very fragile environment around us and we don't entirely know what those risks are. Sometimes we have a tremendous population growth in terms of humanity. We know we're looking at projections up into nine point two billion by 2050. Rightly we're above seven billion right now. We have a lot of people and this is a real change from the history. We know that there's this tremendous upsurge and when we have this upsurge well, we have more needs and wants right. It’s not just that we have more need for food but there's always in our society.

What we need, we're all focusing on things that we want, and we actually consume a huge amount of objects and resources to make ourselves happy. Because we have a lot of resources that's a real consideration. When we look at this consumption, overall we produce a tremendous amount of waste per capita, we spend that we produce. About four-five pounds of waste per day per person that sounds like actually a fair amount of waste. But when we actually look at the amount of waste that we produce through other sources, for example, sewage and industrial waste that's almost 300 pounds per capita per day.  A lot of the wastes that we reduce we never see it's not the things that we throw out. It's a waste that's produced upstream by industry to produce the things that we use right.

We know there's a tremendous amount of weight that's being put out into the environment most of which we never actually see and many of it for example, animal waste to produce food that we eat there's a lot of different things that were a better mental impacts that extend beyond what we consume what we directly consume.

Climate change is going to be the primary environmental risk factor possibly the major health-related risk factor that we're gonna have to wrestle within the coming century. We know this is a major challenge we've seen it this progression other political levels in terms of trying to think about how we're going to address climate change. In its progression it's moving much lower than many people would like this is an hour piece by notice where it's called politicians discussing.  Climate change and we get the message there is a lot an increasing sense of urgency. What this situation actually looks like, what we're seeing is that, we have this large increase in a release of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. If we look historically over thousands of year’s overtime, we see this fluctuation in terms of the amount of co2 in the atmosphere. However it's never really gone above 300 parts per million, however, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has just skyrocketed now over 400 parts per million. We're about four hundred ten parts per million. What we see is that there is this relationship between carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and overall temperatures. If we look at the co2 consecrate concentration, we see that it correlates with an increase overall increase in temperature and that increase in temperature is what we're calling global warming or climate change. This isn't just a correlation we're not just saying because co2 goes up the temperature goes up and goes up and that we know it's just a correlation. We actually know more than that we actually know a lot about the chemistry of co2 and how affects the way that the environment accumulates warmth. We all know a lot about; we know we have data that shows what is actually causing reflection of heat back into the atmosphere. We know that it correlates with a signature of co2. This is more than just a correlation we actually know at a fairly deep scientific level that this increase in co2 is actually increasing global temperatures. The increase in co2 is all correlated with human activity. These are problems that are causing the overall global carbon footprint in terms of emissions of co2.

There are two big hitters when it comes to this and that's the United States and China. The United States that's the large red globe. The large blue one is for China, now China has a very large impact in terms of emissions but remember that a lot of the reason that China has such a big impact is that they're producing their industrial nation, and they're producing a lot of the things they export. They send to the United States and to Europe right we're the two major partners for products. China produces even though it looks like China is producing a lot of this these emissions. A lot of those emissions are actually really to produce things for us. The cause of those emissions, if we look per capita the United States is one of the biggest per capita consumers’ producers of emissions in the world.  US produce a tremendous amount of emissions in the United States.

 When we think about climate rage and addressing this kind of change, there are a few different scenarios this is presenting in Celsius multiplied this by slightly less than two. That will give numbers and Fahrenheit, but if we did nothing we would expect that the increase in temperature would be somewhere around between 4 & 5 degrees Celsius and that is a huge. 910 degrees Fahrenheit change in terms of overall global temperatures which impacts on the environment. Most people, most scientists estimate that would be catastrophic for our ecosystems. With current policies we expect that there be an increase somewhere in the three ranges. With pledges through the Paris climate Accord, we expect there will be somewhere in the two to three range. Based on these current pledges the hope is that from the Paris climate card this has through increasing pledges and improvements will get it down into the 1.5 to 2 range. The concern is that we've already pushed the co2 levels really high and it's gonna take a long time to actually, bring those down to levels that would decrease this trajectory of global climate change.

Global check and climate change will happen, it’s already happened the co2 is already out there in the atmosphere. If it is cut down emissions to zero today, we would still have problems with climate change because there's much out there in the atmosphere. 

If it's already happened it's the question how can we minimize the overall impact, what does this actually look like when it comes to health?

We know that extremes of weather have a major impact on population health. If we look at the distribution of weather from 1951 to 1980 there's something that we'll notice.  1951 to 1980, there is an average increase in temperature but from 1981 to 1991 that we're getting increasing emissions and then from 1991 to 2001 and increase in the number of the extremes. Overall shift to higher temperatures, there is what we call extreme temperature events due to extremely high temperatures.  These extremes are affecting health. There's a range of different things that we expect that climate change will produce and one is changed in air quality.

Changing air quality is partially due to the fact that we'll have more wildfires we all find that when we have increased in temperature of the atmosphere, we often have a greater collection of particulate matter in environment, for example, around cities it can sometimes trap particulate matter and result in poor air quality. The increase in the pollution that with changes in the temperature, have an increase in allergens in the air.  Increases in the length of the ragweed season that will have more pollen which a lot of people have allergies. This increase in particulate matter overall and lower air quality impacts on cardiovascular disease impacts on lung conditions asthma and other types of health impacts.  Another impact that we'd expect to see in recent research is said that, there actually will be a huge impact on diabetes.

 From these impacts there's a range of different health impacts that we're expecting to see from air quality changes. We also expect to see more extreme weather this one component to this would be increases in flooding in storms. As average temperatures increase we expect that the air quality also change, absorb more water right for every temperature we expect that every degree the air can absorb about 7% more humidity.

On average currently we have about 4 percent greater water in the air now what happens when we have more water in the air?

The powerful storms and potentially observe surges in extreme weather events in terms of hurricanes and floods, which is of substantial concerns. It is expect to see more droughts in certain areas.  Due to these extremely high temperatures, these droughts can have major impacts on health.  Historically droughts actually were a major cause in terms of all  the disasters that are happening in Syria, that was the major drought which led to food insecurity which led to violence, these  can be disruptive than major events . The impacts on water and contamination leads to property loss. Damage that comes from these extreme weather events can anticipate, cause major injury and health impacts.

 From the use of extreme weather events we can also expect that they actually increase the likelihood that we'll have waterborne disease outbreaks. This rising temperature actually also has major health effects, people can get heatstroke and various different diseases.  Again this can affect cardiovascular disease and other health conditions diabetes for example and Lenten conditions as well dehydration is also really dangerous. This will affect people who are in extreme environmental conditions for example, farm workers very often have to work outside farm workers and often immigrant labor which was vulnerable and in situations where they're working in conditions that they really shouldn't be working in.  Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to these high temperatures.

 It's a serious concern; we also have a change in terms of vector-borne illnesses diseases the range of these diseases has actually shifted that we're getting diseases that we wouldn't normally expected. In Washington an increase in West Nile virus things like ticks Lyme disease this is an expansion of these fairly dangerous diseases into new territory because of changes in climate.  In Washington State, a lot of climate change related effects, the fires and near the Columbia River they we're getting droughts, things like the mudslide we’re seeing.

 There's also a lot of concern about the impact on our ecosystem projections are that we're actually going to lose a lot of our snow pack and we rely on our snow pack for water. The mountains rely on that snow pack for water and then there's increasing temperatures are likely to have a major impact on fish. The fish industry, when we have that happening we have changes in the ecosystem and we also have changes to water systems. When we have disruption of water from the snow pack there's a lot of different things that we can think about and be concerned about.

What are the things that we can do to handle extreme height extremely high temperatures? How we can raise awareness about what to do if we have really high temperatures and in the Seattle region right.  Telling people to find places that they can cool down for example, how to protect oneself and how certain vulnerable populations? 

People with disabilities can handle that situation from a public health perspective we really think about.  How can we address these health issues and decrease the health impact that they will have on the public?  This is a challenging situation that is probably stressful for a lot of us? There is hope we know we as a society have come together before a global society have come together before to address these types of international issues. When we come to for example, CFCs and ozone depletion we found in the mid-80s that these CFCs were dramatically affecting our ozone layers.  It was increasing impacts very rapidly and people recognized that and they were very concerned about that because if we have ozone depletion well that increases radiation and skin cancer and mutation rates as a result we could potentially have a really negative health impact.  People came together and create the Montreal Protocol and what we see is that these CFCs are up in the atmosphere they're going to increase. For a while they say just maintain in the atmosphere for a really long time but we do see promising signs in terms of possibly bringing that down. Because the Montreal Protocol actually did effectively decrease our emissions of COCs. We can do those things we can make decisions to make the change and the prayers climate Accord is a really great movement in that direction. Many countries are actually exceeding their goals for decreasing their mission.  This is an exciting time. There's a lot of work to do, a lot to think about. there again this talk was really thinking a little bit about how do we give that we're increasing population. We have a lot we are consuming a lot of things we produce, a lot of waste that has a huge impact on the environment. How do we think about that in terms of the impact on the ecosystem and how do we think about that in terms of decreasing? Alternately the impact on our health because we are part of the world we are not separate from the ecosystem and we do rely on it for our health.