Physicians Sound Alarm On Warming Study Sees Health Problems From Changing Climate

Hordes of disease-bearing ticks. More shellfish contamination. Frequent landslides and floods. Dirtier air, rising oceans and severe summer droughts.

Zeroing in on Washington state after a decade of the hottest weather on record, the Nobel Prize-winning group Physicians for Social Responsibility is warning about major public health consequences from global warming over the next century.

“Washington state residents need to be deeply concerned,” the doctors’ report says.

Their organization’s study, “Death by Degrees,” is being released today and Wednesday at news conferences in Seattle, Spokane and Richland.

The doctors aren’t the first to predict nasty surprises for the region from global warming. A University of Washington interdisciplinary team and the environmental group Earth Island Institute have made similar predictions since 1998.

But the doctors stress health problems - from more flood- and insect-borne diseases to more deaths from asthma, heat stress and injuries.

In the tradition of public health prevention, they call on citizens and policy-makers to take precautions now - even before global warming is completely understood.

“We cannot say exactly when to expect a noticeable increase in floods, or in deaths from asthma among people living in smog-congested cities. No one can,” the report says.

But the need for more research on climate change “should not stop us from taking all practical steps to minimize the hazard. We are certain that fossil fuels play a role in global warming, one step that we can control,” it notes.

The doctors urge individuals to drive less, conserve energy at home and work and lobby Congress to take steps to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases warming the Earth.

The PSR study will be met with skepticism by some experts who maintain it hasn’t been proved that human activities are the cause of the recent upswing in average temperatures. They blame the recent heat spell on a natural variation in world climate.

The doctors, however, stress an emerging consensus among scientists that human activity - especially fossil fuel burning - has accelerated the Earth’s warming trend.

Their study cites recent reports by the National Climatic Data Center and the National Academy of Sciences, which reported in January that Earth’s warming has escalated in the last 20 years.

Now, on any given day, the average temperature is about 1 degree Fahrenheit hotter than it was a century ago, those studies say.

Fuels burned to run vehicles and heat homes and businesses account for about 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States. These gases have enhanced the heat-trapping capacity of the Earth’s atmosphere, the report says.

The doctors admit there’s uncertainty in global warming predictions. Their report is sprinkled with conditional phrases - “could” and “may”- as it describes possible local consequences.

An example: “The predicted increase in Washington’s average summer temperature of 4 to 5 degrees (over the next century) could double the number of very hot days,” leading to more heat-related deaths and illnesses.

The report warns of several problems, including:

More turbulent weather.

Floods, droughts, storms and heat waves may increase deaths among children, the poor and the elderly and cause economic dislocation. Winter precipitation is expected to increase 10 percent by 2010 on the West Side.

East of the Cascades, drought is the main concern. The report notes the vulnerability of the $29 billion agriculture sector that accounts for 20 percent of the state’s economy.

Severe drought also could accelerate wildfires similar to the one that recently scorched Hanford, coming perilously close to the nation’s most dangerous nuclear burial ground.

“Extreme weather may affect Hanford’s deadly legacy,” the report says about the fire threat.

Rising seas may threaten freshwater supplies and displace coastal residents.

The ocean near Seattle has been rising 8 inches per century and is likely to rise another 19 inches by 2100 due to climate change, the report says.

Deteriorating air. Ozone alerts, pollen and gaseous chemicals would increase. The trend could be especially harmful to the 600,000 Washingtonians, including 150,000 children, who suffer from asthma.

Infectious diseases are likely to spread.

Warmer weather may lengthen the season that ticks already here remain active and shift other ticks’ geographic range northward into Washington from Califonia and Oregon. That northward shift has already been detected for a disease-carryng European tick in Sweden, the report says.

Hantavirus, malaria and West Nile virus - a disease that killed seven people and sickened dozens in New York last year - could also increase, the report notes.

Contamination of water, food and shellfish could be harder to control.

The Washington state report is the sixth of 18 state-specific reports PSR is publishing. The group has 16,000 members nationwide. It shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize with an affiliate, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, for helping defuse nuclear tensions.

The PSR report can be seen online starting today at www.psr.org/ washington, or it can be ordered from the group’s national office at (202) 898- 0150, ext. 228.