date: Sat, 23 Jan 1999 16:15:48 +0000 from: Tony McMichael subject: MRC/NERC application - URGENT, etc. to: andy.hall@lshtm.ac.uk, laura.rodrigues@lshtm.ac.uk, katrin.kuhn@lshtm.ac.uk, clive.davies@lshtm.ac.uk, rssmith@phls.co.uk, c.bentham@uea.ac.uk, m.hulme@uea.ac.uk, sari.kovats@lshtm.ac.uk, a.haines@ucl.ac.uk, astrid.fletcher@lshtm.ac.uk, paul.wilkinson@lshtm.ac.uk Dear colleagues, Further to my email of yesterday, I have drafted the following three sections for our Outline Proposal. Please let me know of suggested changes by Thursday 28.1.99. But don't let that interfere with your own drafting efforts - a one-page AND a quarter-page abstract of (each of) your project(s). To be emailed ASAP to . Tony McM --------------------------------------------------- PROPOSAL FOR AN MRC/NERC-FUNDED COOPERATIVE GROUP: "CLIMATE CHANGE, OZONE DEPLETION AND HEALTH" SUMMARY (c.250 words) We face an unprecedented period of global environmental change due to the now systemic aggregated impact of human activities. These largescale changes include greenhouse gas accumulation in the lower atmosphere (anticipated to alter world climate conditions and patterns) and depletion of ozone in the stratosphere. Recent comprehensive scientific reviews have described the range of potential health impacts of climate change (IPCC, 1996; McMichael et al., 1996), including via thermal stresses, extreme weather events, and changes in transmission patterns of infectious diseases. Reviews in relation to ozone depletion (DETR(UK), 1997; UNEP, 1998) point to increased risks of skin cancer, certain eye disorders, and altered immune functioning. We propose a set of ten projects, as newly-funded component grants. Those projects, of three kinds, will: (i) estimate ongoing and future changes in human exposures to climatic conditions and to ultraviolet irradiation (particularly within the UK); (ii) describe relations between recent or current variations in climate (thermal stresses, floods, changes in mean climatic conditions) or in UVR exposures and selected health outcomes (mortality, morbidity, biological change); and (iii) develop models of future health impacts of anticipated/modelled changes in climate/UVR exposures. (See also the appended table.) The Cooperative Group will have its health sciences base at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and its environmental sciences base (climatology, air quality, ultraviolet radiation) at the University of East Anglia. This initiative would formalise and greatly extend preexisting contacts and minor collaborations between those groups. Further, the set of projects would bring in a range of other expert collaborators, especially in the fields of ultraviolet radiation physics (Durham University), hydrology (Middlesex University), infectious diseases (CDSC), disaster medicine (University College London), ophthalmology and immunology (various). SIGNIFICANCE/AIMS Climate scientists predict with increasing confidence that the accumulation of human-made greenhouse gases will induce climatic changes over the course of coming decades. Climate variability may also increase. Stratospheric ozone depletion has been evident since the 1970s; current predictions are that it will continue until around 2020, followed by slow recovery. The consequent incremental ultraviolet flux is greatest during the winter-spring transition months (approximating a seasonal 20% increase in northern Europe). The scale and complexity of these two changes, and the diversity of anticipated potential health impacts, require an interdisciplinary research effort. That effort will encompass both empirical research and the future-oriented modelling of likely outcomes. No such coordinated research effort has yet been undertaken in the UK. This Cooperative Group aims to: 1. Establish a close, synergistic, working relationship between key disciplines in the environmental sciences and health sciences, from several institutions, to achieve high-quality description and estimation of present and future health impacts from climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion. 2. Extend and strengthen the information base about causal relationships, which will allow, in turn, improvement of predictive modelling techniques. 3. Generate, where possible, quantitative estimates of the future health impacts of scenarios of climate change and ozone depletion. Such estimates provide an important guide to future priorities in research, surveillance and social policy development. VALUE FOR MONEY This research topic area clearly needs affirmative action support. (Its development in the UK is lagging behind the equivalent research effort in various other western countries.) This proposal for a Cooperative Group, in response to the MRC/NERC initiative, has brought together several institutions and disciplines in a way that is essential to this complex research topic. Both the LSHTM and UEA have, separately, been involved as leaders in the national and international efforts to define the conceptual and methodological development of the health impact and climate-environmental change dimensions of this topic. Via that developmental process, during the 1990s, it has become clear that there is now a need to embark on specific empirical and modelling studies to carry this effort forwards. This proposed set of projects will bring together the UK's considerable strengths in the climate-environmental and health sciences, drawing also on several external collaborations with able and experienced researchers. Further, there would be important synergies (and economies of coordination) between various of these projects. Project 4, for example, would provide invaluable high-quality input into several of the other projects. We believe that this Cooperative Group, if funded, would achieve a productive research collaboration of considerable international stature and importance. --------------- --- From: A.J. McMichael Professor of Epidemiology Department of Epidemiology and Population Health London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Keppel Street London WC1E 7HT U.K. Ph: +44 171 927.2254 Fax: +44 171 580.6897 email: t.mcmichael@LSHTM.ac.uk Web: http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/eps/eu/euintro.htm