Researcher highlights impact of climate change on respiratory health

A Teesside University public health academic is highlighting how climate change could create additional risks for people living with serious lung conditions.

Dr Davies Adeloye, Associate Professor of Public Health in the University’s School of Health & Life Sciences, is calling for climate resilience to become part of respiratory healthcare. Dr Adeloye discusses the issue in leading respiratory medicine journal, The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. His commentary, ‘When a vulnerable lung meets a changing climate,’ focuses on interstitial lung disease (ILD), a group of conditions that can cause inflammation and scarring of the lungs and substantially affect breathing.

People with ILD may be particularly vulnerable to environmental disruption as many have reduced lung capacity, while some depend on specialist services or supplemental oxygen.

Dr Adeloye said: “For someone already living with severely reduced lung function, a heatwave, wildfire, flood, or power failure is not simply an environmental event. It can increase harmful exposures, while also disrupting access to the treatment, oxygen, electricity or specialist care that keeps that person well.”

He also points to evidence which links air pollution and other inhaled environmental exposures with the development and progression of some forms of ILD. However, the direct effects of heat, flooding and other climate-related hazards remain less certain.

Dr Adeloye’s commentary also highlights global inequalities, with people living in countries facing high levels of air pollution and growing climate vulnerability, also facing limited access to specialist lung services, diagnostic imaging and disease surveillance, which can make the true burden of ILD difficult to establish.

He added: “Climate resilience in healthcare must go beyond preparing hospitals for extreme weather. We need to consider what happens to patients when temperatures rise, electricity fails, communities flood or access to healthcare is interrupted. For people with limited respiratory reserve, resilience should become part of good lung care, not an environmental add-on.”

Dr Adeloye, whose research focuses on global respiratory health and disease burden, is calling for practical planning to protect patients whose treatment, oxygen supply or access to care could be disrupted during environmental emergencies. He currently leads the C2REST Nigeria Study, funded by the UK Medical Research Foundation, which is investigating climate change and respiratory health in Nigeria.

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