Climate change will have wide-ranging and mostly damaging impacts on human health, warns Dr. Paul Epstein in a recent study entitled Human Health and Climate Change, "There have been periods of uncontrollable waves of disease that radically altered human civilization in the past, such as when Europe's population was devastated by bubonic plague in the Middle Ages. That problem was associated with population growth and urbanization. Now, a warming climate, compounded by widespread ecological changes, may be stimulating wide-scale changes in disease patterns, Epstein remarks. His study seems to suggest that climate change could have an impact on health in three major ways, by creating conditions conducive to outbreaks of infectious diseases, increasing the potential for transmissions of vector-borne diseases and the exposure of millions of people to new diseases and health risks, and hindering the future control of diseases. 'There are indications, he notes, that this disturbing change has already begun.
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