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Cutting global warming pollution would not only make the planet healthier, it would make people healthier too, new research suggests.
Slashing carbon dioxide emissions could save millions of lives, mostly by reducing preventable deaths from heart and lung diseases, according to studies released Wednesday and published in a special issue of The Lancet British medical journal.
"Relying on fossil fuels leads to unhealthy lifestyles, increasing our chances for getting sick and in some cases takes years from our lives," US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a telecast briefing from her home state of Kansas. "As greenhouse gas emissions go down, so do deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. This is not a small effect."
Instead of looking at the health ills caused by future global warming, as past studies have done, this research looks at the immediate benefits of doing something about the problem, said Linda Birnbaum, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
Some possible benefits seemed highly speculative, the researchers conceded, based on people driving less and walking and cycling more. Other proposals studied were more concrete and achievable, such as eliminating cook stoves that burn dung, charcoal and other polluting fuels in the developing world.
And cutting carbon dioxide emissions also makes the air cleaner, reducing lung damage for millions of people, doctors said.
"Here are ways you can attack major health problems at the same time as dealing with climate change," said lead author Dr. Paul Wilkinson, an environmental epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Wilkinson said the individual studies came up with numbers of premature deaths prevented or extra years of life added for certain locales.
For example, switching to low-polluting cars in London and Delhi, India, would save 160 lost years of life in London and nearly 1,700 in Delhi for every million residents, one study found. But if people also drove less and walked or biked more, those extra saved years would soar to more than 7,300 years in London and 12,500 years in Delhi because of less heart disease.
(Read by Guanny Liu. Guanny Liu is a multimedia journalist at the China Daily Web site.)
(Agencies)
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最新研究表明，减少温室气体排放不仅能改善地球环境，还可以改善人们的健康。
上周三在英国医学期刊《柳叶刀》特刊上发表的研究报告显示，减少二氧化碳的排放可以拯救数百万人的生命，尤其是可减少由心脏病和肺病所导致的可预防性死亡。
美国卫生与公众服务部部长卡瑟琳•西贝利厄斯在家乡堪萨斯州的一次电视广播简报会上说：“对矿物燃料的依赖导致了不健康的生活方式，增大了人们患病的风险，有些情况下还会缩短人们的寿命。随着温室气体排放的减少，由心血管和呼吸道疾病导致的死亡病例也会减少。这个影响可不小。”
美国国家环境健康科学研究所所长琳达•伯恩鲍姆称，和以往一些关注未来全球变暖所导致的疾病的研究不同，该研究主要着眼于解决此问题所带来的立竿见影的益处。
科研人员坦承，有些行为带来的潜在益处似乎很不稳妥，如少开车、多走路和多骑车。而其它一些方案则更加具体可行，如减少发展中国家烧畜粪、木炭、或其它污染燃料的厨灶的使用。
医生们表示，减少碳排放还可以净化空气，减少数百万人的肺部损伤。
研究报告的主要撰写者、伦敦卫生及热带医学学院环境流行病学家保罗·威尔金森博士说：“这些办法可以让人们在应对气候变化的同时解决主要的健康难题。”
威尔金森称，一些个体研究指出，在某些地区，减少碳排放让很多人免于早亡，或使人们的寿命得以延长。
例如，某项研究显示，如果在伦敦推广小排放量汽车，可使每百万居民的寿命延长160年，在印度德里为1700年。但如果人们同时少开车、多走路或多骑车，则可减少心脏病患病率，从而使这两个数字分别达到7300多年和1.25万年。 |
