Climate Postcards: Vector-Borne Disease
Climate Postcards:
Climate Change Makes Me Sick!
Vector-Borne Disease
Spread the knowledge! Please feel free to share, re-post and print our e-cards. Click the images for larger, printable versions.
Below, you will find detailed information, resources, and opportunities to take climate-protective action.
What’s the relationship between climate change and vector-borne disease?
Several dangerous infectious diseases are spread by insects or other carriers (vectors).
Although the spread of these diseases cannot be directly correlated with climate change, there is a strong association between climate change’s impacts on weather and several key behaviors of disease-bearing vectors.
Disease-carriers like ticks, mosquitoes and fleas respond to higher temperatures and increased humidity. Studies show that these factors affect how fast and how broadly these carriers colonize new areas, how long their reproductive seasons last, and how often mosquitoes bite. This can result in more humans being exposed, and more cases of disease.
Lyme Disease:
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Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF)
Plague
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Mosquito-borne Diseases
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How can I help fight climate change?
- Spread the knowledge by sharing our postcards!
- Use our postcards to query your federal, state or local government representatives: What are they doing to protect your community from the dangers to health posed by climate change?
- Climate change is accelerated by burning fossil fuels. In order to slow climate change and protect air quality, we must replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and energy efficiency.
- Join PSR’s Activist List.
Resources
- U.S. Global Change Research Program (2016, April 4) The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment
This government study documents “what we know about the impacts of climate change on public health, and the confidence with which we know it.” It examines a broad range of health impacts as they affect the health of the American people, not just in the future but right now. - American Public Health Association: Warmer Water and Flooding Increase the Risk of Illness and Injury
- PSR: Vector-Borne and Water Borne Diseases (Fact Sheet)
- PSR: Climate Change and Health: Insect-borne Disease (Fact Sheet)
- American Public Health Association: Climate Change Increases the Number and Geographic Range of Disease- Carrying Insects and Ticks