Climate change affects mental and social health as well as physical well-being
Rising global temperatures are impacting not just peoples' physiological health but also society's health, according to "Heat Advisory: Protecting Health on a Warming Planet," a book by a University at Buffalo professor.
Coming out in paperback in August, the book provides an alarming but systematic overview of the peer-reviewed medical and scientific research exploring the public health impact of climate change. In addition to obvious effects, such as increased death rates caused by heat waves producing heat stroke and related conditions, the book discusses how agricultural disasters caused either by severe droughts or excessive rainfall damage human health.Author Alan Lockwood, MD, professor emeritus of neurology in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, notes that the ability to procure food in many regions of the world is already problematic as a result of climate change.
