Malaria to New York City From Carbon Emissions
Posted on July 18, 2009
Filed Under Allergy | Leave a Comment
Malaria is a long-time plague of human beings in tropical areas where specific mosquito populations carry the infectious organism. Much of North America and the developed world lives in places where it routinely freezes, effectively culling populations of mosquitoes that carry the disease. If the average temperature of the world were to rise 6.4C/11.5F as some climatological models predict, the range of the mosquitoes that carry malaria could reach just about everywhere.
It has already been noted that countries that suffer from malarial disorders are only about one-fifth as economically productive as countries where the disease is unknown. This is largely due to the way the disease leaves adults ill and in constant pain. Though it accounts for about three million deaths each year, most of these are in the poorest parts of Africa and among often malnourished children. For the most part, the disease causes what sociologists call “morbidity” rather than “mortality.”
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