New insight into ’Health in the Climate Crisis

University Increasing drought and lack of snow in winter, aridity and floods in summer: the climate crisis has taken on clear manifestations - also in terms of health. The urgency of the issue prompted MedUni Vienna to update the book "Climate Change and Health". The new edition was recently published under the title "Health in the Climate Crisis" and was presented yesterday as part of the "Medical University of Vienna Day". In their guidebook, Hans-Peter Hutter and a team of authors from MedUni Vienna's Centre for Public Health cover a range of topics from the consequences of extreme weather events and the effects of climate change on mental health to connections with the biodiversity crisis and other less obvious aspects: According to new scientific findings, prolonged exposure to air pollutants not only increases the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2, but also the risk of contracting COVID-19 and dying. The close affiliation between climate change and air pollutants has already been demonstrated by science in numerous studies. The intensive research on SARS-CoV-2 throughout the past three years has not only produced findings on the virus itself, but also on the measurable impact of air pollution on infectious diseases, which is little known to the public: Nitrogen oxides and particulate matter produced by the combustion of fossil fuels prolong the survivability of viruses in the atmosphere and thus increase the risk of infection. A study from northern Italy in 2020 demonstrated that an increase of just one millionth of a gram of fine dust per cubic metre of air on an annual average can increase infections with SARS-CoV2 by five percent.