Chapter 3 Climate Applications and Services

 Climate Applications > Health and Safety

Environmental Health is the interaction between the environment and the health of populations of people and has been defined as "those aspects of human health determined by physical, biological, and social factors in the environment." Climate is one of those factors and the number of studies examining the influence of climate is growing. A recent investigation by the Bureau of Meteorology’s Northern Territory Regional Office and the Australian National University on the influence of climate on outbreaks of meningitis among indigenous people of central Australia provides an example and others are discussed below.

Air quality

Extensive monitoring of air quality is crucial to ensuring public health. Pollutants accumulate in the air because of adverse regional weather conditions, and can recirculate, carried by local airflows.

State Environmental Protection Authorities (EPAs) monitor and record air quality in urban and industrial areas. Historical climate data are used in the quality control process, for example, in determining whether an unusual air quality reading is due to an instrument malfunction or is valid (e.g. the reading may have resulted from very stable atmospheric conditions on the day). Reference to the historical climate data is essential.

The Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing has funded The National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health (NCEPH) in a series of research training activities in a three year program to study the relationships between the "Atmospheric environment and health".

CSIRO Atmospheric Research’s Environmental Consulting and Research Unit (ECRU) provide applications of the Division's strategic research in the field. Among other activities, ECRU carries out assessments of regional dry and wet acid deposition and climate variability impact assessments. Applying its latest advances in pollution research, CSIRO is helping to resolve air quality problems in Australia and South-East Asia. The air-quality consequences of a proposed factory or mine can be predicted at the design stage, using local climate data, thus avoiding costly and damaging impacts on air-quality.

The Australian Air Quality Forecasting System is a collaborative project between the Bureau of Meteorology Research Centre, CSIRO and the EPAs of Victoria and New South Wales which provides detailed forecasts of air quality for the Melbourne and Sydney metropolitan regions.

Arboviruses

In Australia, there are more than 70 viruses that are spread by insects, which can breed rapidly during unusually rainy periods. Murray Valley Encephalitis (MVE), Kunjin (KUN) disease, Barmah Forest disease, dengue fever and Ross River fever are examples of diseases observed in Australia, which are carried by mosquitoes. While malaria has been eradicated from Australia, climatic conditions in northern Australia are expected to become more conducive to malaria transmission over coming decades. An outbreak of Barmah Forest virus disease in Victoria in early 2002 (and many cases of dengue fever in Cairns in early 2003) have highlighted the public health threat from arboviruses (diseases carried by arthropods).

MVE is carried from northern Australia by migratory water birds (hosts), which move far into the southern parts of Australia during very wet years. Mosquitoes (vectors) can carry the virus from infected water birds to humans. Monitoring of weather conditions and vector surveillance determines whether there is a potential for MVE activity to occur.

Government based programs in most Australian states undertake mosquito monitoring and virus surveillance from mosquitoes. They also aim to provide increasing understanding of interrelationships between arboviruses, vectors and climatic conditions. Organisations involved include state health departments, the Department of Medical Entomology at Westmead Hospital and the Queensland Institute for Medical Research’s Mosquito Control Laboratory. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Seasonal Climate Outlook is used to predict likely arbovirus risk in the coming summer.

NCEPH have carried out studies of how climatic variations influence the occurrence of several infectious diseases, especially Ross River virus disease and bacterial food poisoning. They plan to develop an early warning system for weather conditions conducive to Ross River disease outbreaks, so that local health authorities can initiate mosquito control programs. Ross River Virus in the north of Australia has been shown to be directly linked to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon, as La Niña (rainy) years provide ideal conditions for the breeding of the virus' hosts and vectors. Health authorities are concerned that climate change could be bringing Ross River virus further south, threatening Australia’s southern cities.

Safety

The Natural Hazards Research Centre (NHRC) at Macquarie University have updated their database on fatalities from tropical cyclones. The original database was a historical record of the impact of tropical cyclones occurring around the Australian coast. The effect on areas such as health, the built environment, agriculture, the physical environment, economics and the biosystem were listed, as were the characteristics of the tropical cyclones. The recent project concentrated on fatalities along the Queensland coast. The database provides information about the vulnerability of different sectors of the population through time and space.

The Bureau of Meteorology continues its contribution to the Australian Standard for Lightning Protection, which provides guidance on lightning protection measures for structures and the people who work inside them. The NCC are collaborating with the University of Queensland's Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering on the development of a lightning ground flash density map for Australia, derived from NASA satellite remote sensing data.

Mood/Violence

The Australian Institute of Suicide Research and Prevention has found suicide rates are higher during the hottest times of the year; changes in temperature appear to be a major contributing factor for people who are vulnerable to suicide. It is reasonably well established that violent crime also increases with increasing temperature. Researchers at James Cook University's psychology department have linked the unusually hot 2002-03 summer in North Queensland with mood problems among people in the region.

Thermal Sensation/Stress

Evaluation of thermal sensation is important in areas such as air-conditioning design, industrial relations and sports medicine. For decades, Commonwealth public servants posted to remote areas with harsh climates have been paid an allowance to compensate them for the climate’s effect on their quality of life and their air-conditioning costs. As the thermal sensation component of the allowance had been calculated 30 years ago, the Bureau of Meteorology’s NCC calculated updated values for the Department of Defence. The Bureau of Meteorology’s Western Australian Regional Office provided the Western Australian Education Department with advice about mean Relative Strain Index (RSI, an index of thermal sensation) over the Perth Metropolitan region. The data were used as a basis for decisions on installing air-conditioning in schools.

Heat is an issue of fundamental concern to those who play sport because it is potentially fatal. Sporting organizations such as Soccer Australia have guidelines for event planning and cancellation, based on thermal conditions likely at the time of day and year. A study to measure the effects of heat stress on cricketers is being carried out by the Australian Cricket Board, the ACT Academy of Sport and the Darwin-based Heat Training and Acclimatisation Centre.

Ultraviolet radiation

Skin cancer in humans is linked with sunlight exposure. It is the most common and the most costly cancer in Australia, where light coloured skin and high levels of solar radiation predominate. Australia is recognised as a leader in the field of skin cancer research, with active research groups in most Australian states. The Melanoma and Skin Cancer Research Institute (MASCRI) is a joint venture of the Melanoma Foundation and the Dermatology Foundation of the University of Sydney. Recommendations for outdoor activities, prevention and therapy of skin cancer, all depend upon our understanding of the biological processes involved in the disease. Research teams under MASCRI are addressing the many events in the skin which follow sun exposure as these may lead to skin cancer.

However, ultraviolet radiation (UVR) has beneficial as well as adverse health effects. A positive aspect to Australia’s generally high UVR levels may be that UVR helps prevent auto-immune diseases such as type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis (MS). A recent study found that infants who were given vitamin D (the ‘sunshine’ vitamin, increased by UVR exposure) were much less likely to develop type 1 diabetes as adults (Hypponen 2001). Australian researchers have been studying the prevalence of MS, a serious auto-immune disease in which the sheath around nerve fibres is attacked by the body’s own white blood cells. They had previously found a striking relationship between MS prevalence and latitude. People in Tasmania are more than six times as likely to get the disease as those in tropical Queensland. Subsequently, workers at the Menzies Centre and NCEPH have discovered that the regional variation in MS can be predicted by variation in regional UVR (Figure 3.7), indicating that UVR may have some protective effect (van der Mei 2001). The (inverse) association of UVR and MS was found to be stronger than the association of malignant melanoma and UVR, which is already known to be causal. Similarly, an inverse association between regional UVR and type 1 diabetes prevalence has now been documented. The World Health Organization has begun work in estimating the global burden of disease attributable to UVR exposure - with particular attention to skin cancers, impacts on the eye, and effects due to alterations of immune activity and vitamin D synthesis.

Figure 3.7. The relationships between ultraviolet radiation, bright sunshine and latitude with Australian age-standardized multiple sclerosis prevalence with fitted polynomial curves. Source: National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University.

Food poisoning

A recent study by NCEPH describes the relationship between temperature and the occurrence of food-borne disease in Australia.