Background: An important feature of climate change is increasing human heat exposure in workplaces without cooling systems in tropical and subtropical countries. Detailed gridded heat exposure maps will provide essential information for public health authorities. Objectives: To develop and test methods for calculating occupational heat exposures and present results in easily interpreted maps.
Background: Health impacts related to climate change are potentially an increasing problem in Cameroon, especially during hot seasons when there are no means for protective and adaptive actions. Objective: To describe environmental conditions in schools and to evaluate the impact of heat on schoolchildren's health during school days in the Cameroon cities of Yaoundé and Douala. Methods: Schoolchildren (N=285) aged 12–16 years from public secondary schools completed a questionnaire about their background, general symptoms, and hot feelings in a cross-sectional study.
The evidence on negative consequences from climate change on human health and well-being is growing. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described climate change as a threat to the climate system that sets the basis for life and human health conditions. The changing climate is expected to affect basic requirements needed to support and sustain human health such as good food, clean water, and unpolluted air, with negative effects that are expected to be unequally distributed.
Objectives Several categories of ill health important at the global level are likely to be affected by climate change. To date the focus of this association has been on communicable diseases and injuries. This paper briefly analyzes potential impacts of global climate change on chronic non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Method We reviewed the limited available evidence of the relationships between climate exposure and chronic and NCDs. We further reviewed likely mechanisms and pathways for climatic influences on chronic disease occurrence and impacts on pre-existing chronic diseases. Results
the official picture Work related injuries and diseases come in many different forms and are often difficult to record, because other causal or risk factors than work are also involved. A worker injured by machinery inside a factory will clearly be classified as an occupational injury, but what if the worker was injured in a car crash driving between two worksites during working hours? It is likely that this will be classified as a traffic injury rather than as an occupational injury. Similarly, if an insulation worker who smokes develops lung cancer or
Air pollution and climate change are often treated as if they were two separate problems, when they actually represent the same scourge. While the former has the most acute impact on human health, and causes economic harm to buildings, vegetation and activities such as tourism, the latter affects lives, property and the natural world in a less direct way, through weather disasters, windstroms, floods, droughts and rising sea levels.
The ‘high occupational temperature health and productivity suppression’ programme (Hothaps) is a multicentre health research and prevention programme aimed at quantifying the extent to which working people are affected by, or adapt to, heat exposure while working, and how global heating during climate change may increase such effects. The programme will produce essential new evidence for local, national and global assessment of negative impacts of climate change that have largely been overlooked.
