Scientists of the University of California (UC) around research director and study author Professor Dr. Robert A. Hiatt tried to find out with older available studies, how the climatic change will affect cancer illnesses, also possibly decades later. According to these studies, a connection is discernible, because by 2050, about 500,000 climate-related deaths are expected, including cancer cases for which a link to climate change can be identified. The researchers also found out that the number of lung cancer cases in particular will play a major role as a result of climate change, because according to the study, new cases of lung cancer are expected as a result of particulate matter pollution alone, which in 15 percent of cases is attributable to it. But also diet-related cancers will increase in the future, according to the long-term research. Climate change also increases social inequalities and poverty, which will contribute to an increase in cancer diseases, according to the current study situation, which is nevertheless difficult to classify. As a result, a higher cancer mortality rate is expected. If the infrastructure of the various health care systems is disrupted, for example by extreme weather events such as floods and storms, this will have a negative impact on the quality and availability of health care. Disasters such as those mentioned above cause, for example, supply bottlenecks, power shortages, transport, communication and personnel bottlenecks and can thus be partly responsible for the increase in cancer incidence in individual health care systems. Ironically, however, the Covid 19 pandemic has also shown that air pollution has decreased and that there is hope that this will reverse the current situation. Action must therefore be taken now to ensure that exposure to air pollution does not have other negative effects, for example on healthy food supplies such as fruit and vegetables. However, clinical diagnoses are so extremely time-delayed that the understanding of the effects of climatic changes will not always be complete, warns the UC team of scientists.
