Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.
CLIMATE CHANGE: Hidden Health Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation
Luis Cifuentes, Victor H. Borja-Aburto, Nelson Gouveia, George Thurston, Devra Lee Davis*
The adoption of readily available measures to lower GHG emissions in Santiago, Mexico City, São Paulo, and New York over the next two decades would also provide major public health benefits from associated reductions in particulate matter and ozone ambient concentrations. Improved technologies to reduce fossil-fuel combustion could reduce these copollutants by about 10%, and thereby avoid some 64,000 premature deaths (including infant deaths), 65,000 chronic bronchitis cases, and 37 million person-days of restricted activity or work loss in these four cities alone through 2020. If the substantial public health benefits we have charted here become more widely recognized, and their full economic and social impact are integrated into discussions of climate policy, this could prompt a major rethinking of the climate debate and help break through the present impasse.
L. Cifuentes, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. V. H. Borja-Aburto, Dirección General de Salud Ambiental, Secretaria de Salud, Mexico City, DF, Mexico. N. Gouveia, Departamento de Medicina Preventiva--Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. G. Thurston, Nelson Institute of Environmental Medicine, New York University School of Medicine, Tuxedo, NY 10987, USA. D. L. Davis, H. John Heinz III School for Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ddavis{at}andrew.cmu.edu
Global health benefits of mitigating ozone pollution with methane emission controls..
J. J. West, A. M. Fiore, L. W. Horowitz, and D. L. Mauzerall (2006)
PNAS
103, 3988-3993
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
Global climate change and health: recent findings and future steps.
R. S. Kovats and A. Haines (2005)
Can. Med. Assoc. J.
172, 501-502
|Full Text »|PDF »
The Ancillary Carbon Benefits of SO2 Reductions from a Small-Boiler Policy in Taiyuan, PRC.
R. Morgenstern, A. Krupnick, and X. Zhang (2004)
The Journal of Environment Development
13, 140-155
|Abstract »|PDF »
Cardiovascular pathophysiology of environmental pollutants.
A. Bhatnagar (2004)
Am J Physiol Heart Circ Physiol
286, H479-H485
|Full Text »|PDF »
Breathless in Los Angeles: The Exhausting Search for Clean Air.
N. Kunzli, R. McConnell, D. Bates, T. Bastain, A. Hricko, F. Lurmann, E. Avol, F. Gilliland, and J. Peters (2003)
Am J Public Health
93, 1494-1499
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
Blue Skies in Beijing? Looking at the Olympic Effect.
V. Brajer and R. W. Mead (2003)
The Journal of Environment Development
12, 239-263
|Abstract »|PDF »
Response of an allergenic species, Ambrosia psilostachya (Asteraceae), to experimental warming and clipping: implications for public health.
S. Wan, T. Yuan, S. Bowdish, L. Wallace, S. D. Russell, and Y. Luo (2002)
Am. J. Botany
89, 1843-1846
|Abstract »|Full Text »|PDF »
