Human Health Impacts from Urban Heat

We depend on the life-sustaining properties of the atmosphere. It protects us from radiation, maintains climatic equilibrium, and supplies all species with necessary elements of carbon dioxide, water, and oxygen. Recently, however, consternation over the health effects of diminishing atmospheric quality has evolved in conjunction with a belief that an increasingly human-dominated planet, provoked by a progressively destructive attitude towards nature, is altering environmental quality in an unparalleled fashion. It has long been known that specific atmospheric processes, such as weather and longer-term climatic fluctuations, affect human health. The biometeorological literature refers to this relationship as meteorotropism, defined as a change in an organism that is correlated with a change in atmospheric conditions (Munn, 1970). Extreme examples of this relationship can be drawn from the recent Chicago heat wave in 1995. High temperatures, combined with debilitating socio-economic factors, were responsible for more than 500 deaths (Semenza, Rubin, Falter et al., 1996). Although the ravages of weather on human health are largely beyond our control, we still maintain the ability to prevent health impacts. However, health risks and subsequent impacts may be intensified by many factors, including the addition of air pollutant emissions from anthropogenic activities to the atmosphere, and exposure to intensified temperatures as a result of urban heat islands