The Long Emergency: Physicians ' Viewpoint

The New England Journal of Medicine, to their credit,has several open-access essays on the environmental crisis. A good part of the value-added from these is that they demonstrate the synergy among some important issues that aren ' t often considered together, and don ' t get a lot of attention in the corporate media.Sorenson and Gracia-Trebenino discuss an epidemic that is largely ignored in the United States. Agricultural workers in tropical climates are experiencing radical increases in the incidence of chronic kidney disease and renal failure. While the cause is not fully understood, it appears to be linked to rising temperatures resulting in heat stress and dehydration. This is one more indication that the climate emergency will reduce agricultural production, and render large areas of the planet unsuitable for agriculture and even uninhabitable.Another inconvenient truth the corporate media largely ignores is that CO2 is not the only harmful emission from burning fossil fuel. Ultra-fine particles -- especially so-called PM2.5, which are microscopic, are inhaled into the alveoli and can pass into the blood stream --kill people. Actually a lot of people. Every 10 μg per cubic meter increase on a given day raises mortality by 0.68%. A microgram is 1 millionth of a gram. These particles are totally imperceptible. You cannot see them or smell them. There could be trillions of them in the space between you and the person next to you and you would be completely unaware of it....
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs