Green Monday 10

Sustaining Human Health During Climate and Environmental Change

December 14, 2009

Concern about climate and related environmental change tends to focus on the impact on the natural environment, exemplified by effects on plant life, and on the built environment, exemplified by coastal flooding and attendant loss of property. But these changes can also have a profound effect on human health. Increases in air pollution—particularly of ozone and aerosols—have a demonstrable, significant impact on respiratory health, even though the consequences of aerosols are only now being researched and understood. Addressing public health in the context of climate and environmental change is especially important in Western North Carolina, with its higher than average incidence of asthma and other respiratory disease in children as well as adults.

Panelists

Rangasayi N. Halthore, Senior Research Scientist, Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center, University of Maryland – Baltimore County

Jeffrey D. Schmitt, Adjunct Professor, Physiology-Pharmacology, Translational Sciences Institute, Program for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, Wake Forest University Health Sciences

Michael A. Torres, Professor of Biology, Warren Wilson College

John E. Allen, Jr., Interim Chief Scientist & Director of Atmospheric Science, Blue Ridge Sustainability Institute