Jonathan Patz

University of Wisconsin–Madison | UW · Department of Population Health Sciences

A new generation of activists is calling for bold responses to the climate crisis. Although young people are motivated to act on climate issues, existing educational frameworks do not adequately prepare them by addressing the scope and complexity of the human health risks associated with climate change. We adapted the US government’s climate litera...

The ongoing emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is triggering changes in many climate hazards that can impact humanity. We found traceable evidence for 467 pathways by which human health, water, food, economy, infrastructure and security have been recently impacted by climate hazards such as warming, heatwaves, precipitation, drought, floods, fires...

Climate change will increase extreme heat-related health risks. To quantify the health impacts of mid-century climate change, we assess heat-related excess mortality across the eastern USA. Health risks are estimated using the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP). Mid-century temperature...

In an Editorial discussing the Special Issue on Climate Change and Health, guest editors Jonathan Patz and Madeleine Thompson summarize key issues in the field and describe the significance of research studies included in the issue.

Background Climate change negatively impacts human health through heat stress and exposure to worsened air pollution, amongst other pathways. Indoor use of air conditioning can be an effective strategy to reduce heat exposure. However, increased air conditioning use increases emissions of air pollutants from power plants, in turn worsening air qual...

Measurement, model, and satellite correlations. (DOCX)

Comparison of CMAQ NO2 results with DOMINO satellite NO2 estimates. (DOCX)

The average summer temperatures of NARCCAP models and the present-day. (TIF)

List of chemical species included in NEI emissions estimates from electricity generating units (EGUs). (DOCX)

PM2.5-related morbidity results for standard configuration functions. (DOCX)

MDA8 O3-related morbidity results for standard configuration functions. (DOCX)

Maximum daily 1-hour O3-related morbidity results for included BenMAP functions. (DOCX)

Validation of MyPower and CMAQ results. (DOCX)

Comparison of MyPower and NEI CMAQ results. (TIF)

Evaluation of the present-day simulations’ NO2 column amounts with satellite Ozone Monitoring Instrument NO2. (TIF)

A graphical depiction of temperatures from NARCCAP models shown in S1 Fig and referenced in the main text. (DOCX)

Climate change is causing environmental consequences, including increased temperature, extremes of precipitation, sea level rise, and extreme weather events. Climate change is also causing direct consequences on public health, including heat-related disorders, respiratory and allergic disorders, infectious diseases, and injuries from extreme weathe...

Most US energy consumption occurs in buildings, with cooling demands anticipated to increase net building electricity use under warmer conditions. The electricity generation units that respond to this demand are major contributors to sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), both of which have direct impacts on public health, and contribute t...

Past studies have established strong connections between meteorology and air quality, via chemistry, transport, and natural emissions. A less understood linkage between weather and air quality is the temperature-dependence of emissions from electricity generating units (EGUs), associated with high electricity demand to support building cooling on h...

Climate change is causing increases in temperature, changes in precipitation and extreme weather events, sea-level rise, and other environmental impacts. It is also causing or contributing to heat-related disorders, respiratory and allergic disorders, infectious diseases, malnutrition due to food insecurity, and mental health disorders. In addition...

Today’s substantial global health gains are being undermined by the threat of climate change. Ironically, the actions required to confront the climate crisis represent possibly the largest public health opportunity in more than a century. Health benefits from improved air quality may far outweigh the cost of clean energy investments. Upward trends...

Climate change leads to increasing temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and more extreme weather events, which affect occupational health in many ways. Heat stress at work poses health risks and reduced work capacity, presenting a new and widespread occupational health challenge due to climate change. Human physiology limits to coping with heat...

Biodiversity, ecosystems and the essential services that they deliver are central pillars for all life on the planet, including human life. They are sources of food and essential nutrients, medicines and medicinal compounds, fuel, energy, livelihoods and cultural and spiritual enrichment. They also contribute to the provision of clean water and air...

We examine how climate and irrigation conditions are associated with malaria infection from 1986 to 1995 in two climatically dissimilar regions in India. We analyze annually averaged malaria parasite incidence (API) and seasonally averaged climate and irrigation variables in western Rajasthan and Arunachal Pradesh. In arid western Rajasthan, API is...

Introduction: E nvironmental factors contribute with 16% of the burden of disease in Colombia. A main obstacle in implementing national and regional environmental and occupational health policies is the limited knowledge on the local ability to study and control the impact of harmful exposures on health. Objective: To identify needs for research...

The environmental and health consequences of climate change, which disproportionately affect low-income countries and poor people in high-income countries, profoundly affect human rights and social justice. Environmental consequences include increased temperature, excess precipitation in some areas and droughts in others, extreme weather events, an...

Introducción. Los factores ambientales contribuyen con el 16 % de la carga de enfermedad en Colombia. Un obstáculo importante para la implementación de políticas en salud ambiental y ocupacional es el conocimiento limitado sobre la capacidad local para estudiar y controlar el impacto de exposiciones ambientales y ocupacionales. Objetivo. Identific...

In Reply We agree with Dr Huang and colleagues that there are limits to human beings’ capacity to adapt to climate change, especially if preventive measures are not at the level of full society, multisector interventions. Climate change is neither a conventional single disease agent or toxic exposure nor an individual behavior that can be changed t...

Background: The accelerating accumulation of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere is changing global environmental conditions in unprecedented and potentially irreversible ways. Climate change poses a host of challenges to the health of populations through complex direct and indirect mechanisms. The direct effects include an increased freque...

Climate change will exacerbate health risks through exposures to extreme heat and air pollution through both direct and indirect mechanisms. Directly, warmer temperatures promote biogenic emissions of ozone precursors and favor the formation of ground-level ozone, while increases in the frequency of stagnant air masses will allow fine particulate m...

Professor Emeritus Anthony J. (Tony) McMichael, MBBS, PhD, who passed away on September 26, 2014 was a hugely influential pioneer of global environmental health and a giant in the field of environmental epidemiology. He could be regarded along with other legendary names like Rene Dubos and Rachel Carson, who during their lives, challenged conventio...

Importance Health is inextricably linked to climate change. It is important for clinicians to understand this relationship in order to discuss associated health risks with their patients and to inform public policy.Objectives To provide new US-based temperature projections from downscaled climate modeling and to review recent studies on health ri...

The Midwest is home to expansive agriculture, forests, industry, and people. Climate change will tend to amplify existing risks climate poses to people (increased heat waves, flooding, reduced air and water quality), agriculture (reduced yields despite longer seasons and added CO2, springtime cold air outbreaks), forests (species habitats move nort...

Climatologists now state with a high degree of certainty that global climate change is real, is advancing more rapidly than expected, and is caused by human activities, especially through fossil fuel combustion and deforestation. Environmental public health researchers, in assessing future projections for Earth’s climate, have concluded that, on ba...

Flying foxes Pteropus spp. play a key role in forest regeneration as seed dispersers and are also the reservoir of many viruses, including N ipah virus in B angladesh. Little is known about their habitat requirements, particularly in S outh A sia. Identifying Pteropus habitat preferences could assist in understanding the risk of zoonotic disease tr...

Objectives: This study investigated if the type of drinking water source (treated municipal, untreated municipal, and private well water) modifies the effect of hydrology on childhood (aged < 5 years) gastrointestinal illness. Methods: We conducted a time series study to assess the relationship between hydrologic and weather conditions with chil...

Malaria is a significant public health threat in the Brazilian Amazon. Previous research has shown that deforestation creates breeding sites for the main malaria vector in Brazil, Anopheles darlingi, but the influence of selective logging, forest fires, and road construction on malaria risk has not been assessed. To understand these impacts, we con...

Key Messages 1. In the next few decades, longer growing seasons and rising carbon dioxide levels will increase yields of some crops, though those benefits will be progressively offset by extreme weather events. Though adaptation options can reduce some of the detrimental effects, in the long term, the combined stresses associated with climate chang...

Nipah virus has caused recurring outbreaks in central and northwest Bangladesh (the "Nipah Belt"). Little is known about roosting behavior of the fruit bat reservoir, Pteropus giganteus, or factors driving spillover. We compared human population density and ecological characteristics of case villages and control villages (no reported outbreaks) to...

We respond to Valle and Clark,(1) who assert that "conservation efforts may increase malaria burden in the Brazilian Amazon," because the relationship between forest cover and malaria incidence was stronger than the effect of the deforestation rate.(1) We contend that their conclusion is flawed because of limitations in their methodology that we di...

Air pollution effects from climate change rank high among future health concerns. Nearly 70 million Americans live in areas exceeding air quality standards for fine particulate matter (PM2.5), while 120 million reside in counties exceeding 8-hour ozone standards. Climatic effects on air quality are documented for ozone but not for PM2.5, a more haz...

To an outsider, Wisconsin might seem a state divided by differences. We have a proud agricultural heritage, yet manufacturing provides our financial base. Our diverse and varied landscape includes urban architecture, old growth forests, prairies and dairy farms, all serving vital and important roles. We have intense political ideologies, with passi...

Climate change presents a significant challenge to global health. This paper examines the health impacts of climate change from extreme weather events, temperature changes, rising sea levels and changes in precipitation. These health impacts include heat-related illnesses and deaths, air pollution-related health effects, allergic diseases, infectio...

Climate change adds complexity and uncertainty to human health issues such as emerging infectious diseases, food security, and national sustainability planning that intensify the importance of interdisciplinary and collaborative research. Collaboration between veterinary, medical, and public health professionals to understand the ecological interac...

Indicator bacteria (IB) that tend to occur with human pathogens provide surveillance of waterborne disease risk. This study analyzes a long-term IB surveillance record at Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, United States. The first research objective examined the influence of urbanization on fecal coliform (FC) variability and change from 1975 to 2000. Over th...

The term ‘One Medicine’ was coined by Schwabe (1984) and focuses attention on the commonality of human and animal health. The underlying concept is traceable to the late nineteenth century, in contributions of the German pathologist and architect of social medicine Rudolf Virchow (Saunders 2000; Zinsstag and Weiss 2001). Schwabe states that there i...

The World Health Organization (WHO) has published a discussion paper on the linkages between health and biodiversity, climate change and desertification, the representation of health in the three Rio Conventions, and the opportunities for more integrated and effective policy. Produced in collaboration with the Secretariats of the Convention on Biol...

To improve our understanding of climate variability and diarrheal disease at the community level and inform predictions for future climate change scenarios, we examined whether the El Niño climate pattern is associated with increased rates of diarrhea among Peruvian children. We analyzed daily surveillance data for 367 children aged 0 to 12 years f...

There were nearly 37,000 reported cases of malaria in Peru in 2009 alone. With over 30% of the population identified as being at "high risk" for exposure, detailed risk mapping, along with early detection and warning systems, are in critical need. While there is evidence that the increased formation of puddles arising from deforestation increases t...

Automobile exhaust contains precursors to ozone and fine particulate matter (PM ≤ 2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter; PM2.5), posing health risks. Dependency on car commuting also reduces physical fitness opportunities. In this study we sought to quantify benefits from reducing automobile usage for short urban and suburban trips. We simulated census-tr...

Almost half of the world's population uses coal and biomass fuels for domestic energy. Limited evidence suggests that exposure to air pollutants from indoor biomass combustion may be associated with elevated blood pressure (BP). Our aim was to assess the relationship between air pollution exposure from indoor biomass combustion and BP in women in r...

Abstract Indoor air pollution (IAP) from domestic biomass combustion is an important health risk factor, yet direct measurements of personal IAP exposure are scarce. We measured 24-h integrated gravimetric exposure to particles <2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (particulate matter, PM2.5) in 280 adult women and 240 children in rural Yunnan, China. We...

Given predictions of increased intensity and frequency of heat waves, it is important to study the effect of high temperatures on human mortality and morbidity. Many studies focus on heat wave-related mortality; however, heat-related morbidity is often overlooked. The goals of this study are to examine the historical observed relationship between t...

A fundamental aspect of climate change is the potential shifts in flowering phenology and pollen initiation associated with milder winters and warmer seasonal air temperature. Earlier floral anthesis has been suggested, in turn, to have a role in human disease by increasing time of exposure to pollen that causes allergic rhinitis and related asthma...

Malaria is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the Amazon. We used malaria reports for health districts collected in 2006 by the Programa Nacional de Controle da Malaria to determine whether deforestation is associated with malaria incidence in the county (municipio) of Mancio Lima, Acre State, Brazil. Cumulative percent deforestation was ca...

While melting polar regions, crop failures, and storm disasters dominate the public discourse on global warming, human health risks from climate change are of high concern in the public health field. This presentation will provide case studies showing exposure pathways through which climate change will likely alter health risks. In the US, what w...

Large-scale anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, including land-use change, climate change, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, are all accelerating. These changes are interacting to generate five major emerging public health threats that endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. These threats inclu...

This study examined the larval breeding habitat of a major South American malaria vector, Anopheles darlingi, in areas with varying degrees of ecologic alteration in the Peruvian Amazon. Water bodies were repeatedly sampled across 112 km of transects along the Iquitos-Nauta road in ecologically varied areas. Field data and satellite imagery were us...

Climate changes are altering patterns of temperature and precipitation, potentially affecting regions of malaria transmission. We show that areas of the Amazon Basin with few wetlands show a variable relationship between precipitation and malaria, while areas with extensive wetlands show a negative relationship with malaria incidence.

: Kawasaki disease exhibits a distinct seasonality, and short-term changes in weather may affect its occurrence. : To investigate the effects of weather variability on the occurrence of this syndrome, we conducted a time-between-events analysis of consecutive admissions for Kawasaki disease to a large pediatric hospital in Chicago. We used gamma re...

Land use and cover change drive a range of infectious disease outbreaks or disease emergences. These drivers include agricultural encroachment, deforestation, road construction, dam building, irrigation, wetland modification, mining, the concentration or expansion of urban environments, coastal zone degradation, and other activities. These changes...

Extremes of the hydrologic cycle will accompany global warming, causing precipitation intensity to increase, particularly in middle and high latitudes. During the twentieth century, the frequency of major storms has already increased, and the total precipitation increase over this time period has primarily come from the greater number of heavy even...

Climate change and land use change can affect multiple infectious diseases of humans, acting either independently or synergistically. Expanded efforts in empiric and future scenario-based risk assessment are required to anticipate problems. Moreover, the many health impacts of climate and land use change must be examined in the context of the myria...

The World Health Organization, estimates that 42% of malaria cases are associated with policies and practices regarding land use, deforestation, water resource management, settlement siting and modified house design. This estimate was drawn from expert opinion and studies performed at small scales, but little research has investigated the cumulativ...

As the leading causes of morbidity and mortality have shifted from infectious to non-infectious diseases for industrialized countries, chronic diseases, especially those linked to obesity and air quality have risen in priority for health officials within the US, nearly 100 cities exceed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency National Ambient Air...

Climate change is projected to have adverse impacts on public health. Cobenefits may be possible from more upstream mitigation of greenhouse gases causing climate change. To help measure such cobenefits alongside averted disease-specific risks, a health impact assessment (HIA) framework can more comprehensively serve as a decision support tool. HIA...

Local changes in land-use/cover are so pervasive that, when aggregated globally, they may significantly affect central aspects of the Earth System functioning and thus life support functions and human livelihoods. Estimates of the areal extent, spatial expression or likewise quantitative estimate of the impact of land change more or less converge,...

Climate change, as an environmental hazard operating at the global scale, poses a unique and “involuntary exposure” to many societies, and therefore represents possibly the largest health inequity of our time. According to statistics from the World Health Organization (WHO), regions or populations already experiencing the most increase in diseases...