Voice of America Covers ATS Climate Workshop

Multimedia broadcaster Voice of America reported on the ATS Climate Change and Respiratory Health Workshop that took place May 15, 2010, in New Orleans and was published in the March 15 Proceedings of the American Thoracic Society journal. VOA is federally funded through the Broadcasting Board of Governors and reaches an estimated weekly global audience of 141 million.

The workshop addressed the threat to global respiratory health posed by climate change and was attended by a range of U.S. and international experts, as well as representatives of international respiratory societies and key U.S. government agencies.

“Our greatest concern really centered around the fact that many of the pulmonary physicians and respiratory professionals are really not very well aware of the fact that climate change has an important impact on their patients,” study co-author and UC Davis professor Kent Pinkerton, PhD, tells VOA reporter Joe DeCapua in the April 4, 2012, article “Rising Temperatures, Rising Health Problems.”

Dr. Pinkerton chairs the ATS Environmental Health Policy Committee. “We’re now beginning to see some infections and some vector borne diseases in different areas of the world that we’ve never seen before,” Dr. Pinkerton tells VOA.

The workshop focused on the effect of heat waves, air pollution, and natural cycles; mitigation and adaptation measures to be taken, with recommendations for the clinical and research community; recognition of challenges specific to low-resource countries; and priority research infrastructure needs, environmental monitoring, and alert systems. A breakout group compiled 27 recommendations for physicians, researchers, and policy makers.