Climate change may impact health

WASHINGTON — A top government health official said Wednesday that climate change is expected to have a significant impact on health in the next few decades, with certain regions of the country — and the elderly and children — most vulnerable to increased health problems.

Howard Frumkin, a senior official of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave a detailed summary on the likely health impacts of global warming at a congressional hearing. But he refrained from giving an opinion on whether carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, should be regulated as a danger to public health.

"The CDC doesn't have a position on ... EPA's regulatory decisions," said Frumkin, determined to avoid getting embroiled in the contentious issue over whether the Environmental Protection Agency should regulate CO2 under the federal Clean Air Act.

The Supreme Court a year ago declared CO2 a pollutant under the federal air quality law and told the EPA it must determine whether CO2's link to climate change endangers public health or welfare. If it does, it must be regulated, said the court. But the EPA has been slow to respond to the court directive, saying it must review such a regulation's broad impact on emissions from everything from cars and power plants to schools.

"To the science, there is strong evidence the carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas ... and that there is strong evidence that climate change affects public health in many ways," responded Frumkin, carefully gauging his words, when pressed by Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., on the issue.

Frumkin, director of CDC's National Center for Environmental Health, outlined the range of "major anticipated health" issues as a result of climate change.

Among them, the prospects of more heat waves that are of special danger to the elderly and the poor; more incidents of extreme weather posing a danger of drought in some areas and flooding in others; increase of food-borne and waterborne infectious diseases; more air pollution because of higher temperatures; and the migration into new areas of vector-borne and zoonotic diseases such as Lyme disease, West Nile virus, malaria or dengue fever as seasonal patterns change.

"Over the next few decades in the United States, climate change is likely to have a significant impact on health," Frumkin told the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

The Atlanta-based CDC is considered the government's premier disease tracking and monitoring agency.