How climate change causes health risks on children

Drinking water treatment can help resolve this problem

A geography professor of Florida State University Mr. Chris Uejio has published a study “Drinking-water treatment, climate change, and childhood gastrointestinal illness projections for northern Wisconsin(USA) communities drinking untreated ground water, which found that extra drinking water treatment will bring advantages to people under climate change risk.

In USA, there are about 20 million people who don’t have treated drinking water. Due to rainfall events and water pollution, the pathogens could enter in water sources and as a result it is easy to cause diseases to people.

The first of the study is to investigate how future rainfall may affect human health. He worked together with the Wisconsin Department of Health and the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin to examine the rate of children ages 5 and under who suffer from gastrointestinal illness(GI) in the next 30 years between 2046 to 2065 compared to the period between 1991 and 2010. The reason of choosing Wisconsin is that the underlying hydrogeology characteristics can influence the ground water contamination. Besides, some cities have water treatment while some cities don’t, which can provide a natural and precise comparison if rainfall events are related to more people getting sick in these districts.

There are three different scenarios including five northern Wisconsin municipalities with a little drinking water treatment that the research team looked at.

The first aspect tested numerous risk of childhood GI if climate change keeps going. Mr. Uejio found that if there is no extra drinking water treatment, childhood GI may raise approximate 1.5 percent and even up to 3.6 percent because of increased rainfall for climate change. The gastrointestinal illnesses cover a wide part of disease ranging from slight stomach pains to more extreme serious symptoms. 7 percent of the children were hospitalized between 1991 and 2010.

The second aspect considered climate change and improvement from human is ongoing and predict the future. It is useful to relieve the impacts of climate change developing by lasting treatment. However, there were still rising rates of childhood GI with untreated drinking water.

The third aspect looked at a more belligerent data in those big cities in research areas that have drinking water treatment. The research team came to a conclusion instinctively that the rate of illness relatively has a dramatical decrease in these areas.

The study of Uejio can help the public policy develop. Climate change in itself is not political, but, in fact, it becomes a politicized issue. Actually, we have the technologies to deal with this difference, which is more important than the effect of climate change. We need the political support and funds to follow up the issue.

Uejio hopes that his study can be a beginning to encourage other researchers to investigate other regions in the US. In fact, Northeastern and Midwestern regions of the US have already been observed to have more rainfall and intense rainfall events, which enrich the sample size of the study.