Climate change could be fueling cancer deaths in women
Higher temperatures spurred by climate change could be increasing women's risk of cancer, a new study says.
Increasing heat in the Middle East and North Africa has made breast, ovarian, uterine and cervical cancers more common and more deadly, researchers reported Monday in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.
For each additional degree Celsius, cases and deaths of female cancers increased, researchers found.
"As temperatures rise, cancer mortality among women also rises -- particularly for ovarian and breast cancers," lead investigator Wafa Abu El Kheir-Mataria said in a news release. She's a global health governance and health equity researcher at the American University in Cairo.
Increased cancer in these countries could serve as a bellwether for what might happen in nations like the United States with currently cooler climes, researchers said.
"Although the increases per degree of temperature rise are modest, their cumulative public health impact is substantial," Mataria added.
For the study, researchers tracked cancers occurring in 17 Middle Eastern and North African countries, including Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian territories.
These countries are already experiencing striking temperature increases tied to climate change, researchers noted.
"Women are physiologically more vulnerable to climate-related health risks, particularly during pregnancy," senior researcher Sungsoo Chun said in a news release. He's associate chair of the Institute of Global Health and Human Ecology at the American University in Cairo.
Researchers compared each nation's temperatures to its cancer statistics between 1998 and 2019, and found that rising heat was associated with more cancer cases and deaths.
Cancers increased by 173 to 280 cases per 100,000 people for every additional degree Celsius, results show. Ovarian cancers cases rose the most, and breast cancers the least.
Likewise, cancer deaths rose by 171 to 332 deaths per 100,000 for each degree of temperature rise, with the greatest increase in ovarian cancer and the smallest in cervical cancer.
Six countries experienced the brunt of this increase in cases and deaths -- Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Syria.
Although hotter temps are a probable risk factor, the heat might also increase other cancer risk factors like air pollution, researchers said.
"Temperature rise likely acts through multiple pathways," Chun said. "It increases exposure to known carcinogens, disrupts healthcare delivery, and may even influence biological processes at the cellular level. Together, these mechanisms could elevate cancer risk over time."
However, researchers noted that the study can't draw a direct cause-and-effect link between climate change and cancers. More research is needed to better understand how higher temperatures might influence cancer risk.
In the meantime, researchers said public health officials should consider climate-related risks in their planning.
"Strengthening cancer screening programs, building climate-resilient health systems, and reducing exposure to environmental carcinogens are key steps," Chun said. "Without addressing these underlying vulnerabilities, the cancer burden linked to climate change will continue to grow."
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about how climate change can impact human health.
Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
WIRED
43 minutes ago
- WIRED
Is Using a Stair Machine the Same as Climbing Stairs?
May 30, 2025 9:00 AM According to physics, one burns more calories than the other—and the winner might surprise you. Photogrpah:You can get a great workout by walking up the stairs in a tall building. The only problem is that you can't watch TV while doing it—hence the popularity of stationary stair-climbing machines. But is it the same? If your goal is to burn calories, does it make any difference which you choose? That's actually a great physics question, and we can get a pretty good mental workout with it. Shall we? The Work-Energy Principle OK, what is a calorie, anyway? It's a unit of energy, defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius. (This is your common 'food calorie': chemists confusingly use a calorie measure that's 1,000 times smaller.) Of course, in physics we prefer to measure energy in joules. Just to give you a feel for this unit, if you lift a textbook from the floor to a table, that would take about 10 joules. Now, the work-energy principle says that in order to change the energy of a system, you need to add energy to (or remove energy from) the system. That seems obvious, but it's actually useful. We call the energy input (or output) 'work.' Work is done on a system by applying a force over some distance. Let's go back to the case of lifting a book off the floor. The first thing we need to do is define our 'system.' That tells us what kinds of changes in energy we're going to deal with. So I'm going to use the system consisting of the book and the Earth. Since the book can move, it can have kinetic energy (K), which depends on its mass (m) and velocity (v). And with Earth in the system, we can also have gravitational potential energy (U). This depends on the mass of the book, the gravitational field (g), and the height of the book above the floor (y). With this, we can write the work-energy principle as the following: Notice that we're dealing with changes in energy—the Greek delta symbol means the change in something. If the book starts and ends at rest, then the change in kinetic energy is zero. That leaves us with just the change in gravitational potential energy. The gravitational field on the surface of the Earth is about 9.8 newtons per kilogram. So, using the formula for U above, with a book mass of 1 kilogram and a change in height of 1 meter, we need a work of 1 x 1 x 9.8 = 9.8 joules (or about 10). Now suppose you are the book, and you go from standing on the floor to standing on the table? In that case, you are part of the system, so there's no external force doing work on the system. How can you have a change in gravitational potential energy without any added work? Well, the simple solution is to add another type of energy—let's just call it 'internal energy.' It's the energy stored in your body by eating your Wheaties for breakfast. It's how humans work. With that, our work-energy equation looks a little different: Since the change in kinetic energy is still zero, this means that the positive change in gravitational potential energy is equal to the negative of the change in internal energy. Let's say you have a mass of 75 kilograms (165 pounds). That means moving up 1 meter would reduce your internal energy by 735 joules. That's called working out. Climbing Stairs vs. a Stair Climber Now we can go back to the original question: What does the work-energy principle say about stairs versus a stair-climbing machine? Well, we already did the physics of stair climbing. It's the same calculation if you get on top of a 1 meter table or climb 100 stories—it's just a different value for the height. But suppose you stay in the same place while the stairs move under you. If someone is measuring your forward motion, they'd say your speed is zero. Your height also doesn't change, so now the work-energy equation looks like this: This says the change in internal energy is also zero, which means you don't burn any calories. I mean, that can't be right … right? Then how do we fix this? I'm going to use a nice example based on this video from Steve Mould. It goes like this: Imagine you are climbing up a downward-moving escalator. Again, an observer on the ground would see you as stationary. However, we could also measure your speed from the reference frame of the escalator, and you would be moving up. In fact, if the escalator had walls and a ceiling, you wouldn't be able tell that you were staying in place. You wouldn't even know the stairs are moving. Since the stairs are moving at a constant velocity (zero acceleration), this would be an inertial reference frame. In physics, any inertial reference frame is as valid as any other reference frame—the basic laws of physics remain the same. So, from the perspective of the escalator frame you are moving up and doing work. It's the same as if you were walking up a stationary frame. But Actually, the Stair Climber Is Harder I said that the stair climber and climbing stairs were the same—but they are not. In fact, climbing up 100 stories is easier than the equivalent distance on a stair climber. Does that seem crazy? It is a little crazy. The reason they're different is because the gravitational field (g) is never really constant. Remember, we defined the gravitational potential energy as U = m x g x y? That's not really wrong, but it is a little misleading. Actually, the gravitational potential energy for the Earth-person system would be defined as the following: Let's go over this new equation. First, we have the universal gravitational constant (G = 6.67 x 10–11 Nm2/kg 2). Next, we have the masses of the two objects involved (M E for the Earth and m for the person). Finally, there is the distance from the center of the Earth to the person (r). Since we are dividing by the distance (r), the gravitational potential decreases as we get farther from the Earth. There's a negative sign there, so that if you move farther from the Earth (we usually call that 'up'), the gravitational potential energy increases from some negative value to a smaller negative value. If this is the gravitational potential energy, then why do we use U = m x g x y? Well, that's just a handy approximation. Since the Earth is very big, with a radius of 6.4 million meters, moving up even 1,000 meters doesn't change the value of r that much. So it's OK to approximate the gravitational field as a constant value of 9.8 newtons per kilogram, even though it actually gets smaller. But just for fun, let's do a more precise calculation. Suppose I climb 100 flights of stairs. Let's say each flight of stairs has a change in height of 3 meters, so that the full climb would be 300 meters. If I start at the surface of the Earth (radius R) and climb up to a certain height (h ), the work-energy equation would look like this: For a person-mass of 75 kilograms, I get a change in internal energy of 2.20312 x 105 joules. Now, if I use the stair climber, the change in energy would just be m x g x h. This gives an energy of 2.20323 x 105 joules. That's a difference of 10.4 joules or 0.0025 calories. If a typical candy bar has 200 calories, this would be 0.001 percent of the bar—not even a tiny bite. What I'm saying is, you can get at least as good a workout on the stair machine— and you can watch TV. I call that a win-win.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Cicadas swarm parts of US as the screaming insects emerge in Brood XIV's 17-year cycle
Another cicada invasion is here. The large Brood XIV, which emerges every 17 years, is making for a spectacular natural event as billions of periodical cicadas emerge across parts of the Eastern U.S., including in Georgia, southern Ohio, Kentucky, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York. When spring warms the soil to 64 degrees Fahrenheit (about 18 degrees Celsius), these cicada nymphs dig their way up to the surface after their long development period. On the right night, usually after a warm spring rain, near trees showing cicada pilot holes and chimneys, they will emerge — so many that they can be heard crunching through the grass to climb up trees, plants, people or any vertical surface. There is a forceful quality about it. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] Once they find footing, they begin the molting process. They shed their nymphal skin, emerging soft, vulnerable and pale yellow. They have two large red eyes on the sides of the head, three small, jewellike eyes called ocelli in the center, and gossamer wings. In a few hours, their bodies harden and darken, and they fly up to the treetops. TRENDING STORIES: Where will Brood XIV cicadas emerge this spring? Georgia is on the list again Freaky bugs and venomous snakes: Why you may see more copperheads during 'cicada-geddon' Get ready Georgia, the cicadas are coming back Then the screaming begins — the loud buzzing, screaming sound males make when they are looking for a mate. It leaves ears ringing. Throughout this process, cicadas serve as a source of protein for both wildlife and humans. They survive by sheer numbers. After mating, females lay eggs in tree branches and die shortly after. The hatched tiny nymphs fall and burrow into the ground, and the cycle begins again. Cicadas are part of the magic of spring when the yellow and purple irises are blooming, and the green is new and vivid. The cicada show takes place in every light of the day and the dark of night. The pull is the power and beauty of nature and time. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
AP PHOTOS: Cicadas swarm parts of US as the screaming insects emerge in Brood XIV's 17-year cycle
CINCINNATI (AP) — Another cicada invasion is here. The large Brood XIV, which emerges every 17 years, is making for a spectacular natural event as billions of periodical cicadas emerge across parts of the Eastern U.S., including in Georgia, southern Ohio, Kentucky, Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and Long Island, New York. When spring warms the soil to 64 degrees Fahrenheit (about 18 degrees Celsius), these cicada nymphs dig their way up to the surface after their long development period. On the right night, usually after a warm spring rain, near trees showing cicada pilot holes and chimneys, they will emerge — so many that they can be heard crunching through the grass to climb up trees, plants, people or any vertical surface. There is a forceful quality about it. Once they find footing, they begin the molting process. They shed their nymphal skin, emerging soft, vulnerable and pale yellow. They have two large red eyes on the sides of the head, three small, jewellike eyes called ocelli in the center, and gossamer wings. In a few hours, their bodies harden and darken, and they fly up to the treetops. Then the screaming begins — the loud buzzing, screaming sound males make when they are looking for a mate. It leaves ears ringing. Throughout this process, cicadas serve as a source of protein for both wildlife and humans. They survive by sheer numbers. After mating, females lay eggs in tree branches and die shortly after. The hatched tiny nymphs fall and burrow into the ground, and the cycle begins again. Cicadas are part of the magic of spring when the yellow and purple irises are blooming, and the green is new and vivid. The cicada show takes place in every light of the day and the dark of night. The pull is the power and beauty of nature and time. ___ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors. Carolyn Kaster, The Associated Press
