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Climate change, fossil fuels hurting people's health, says new global report

The latest Lancet Countdown, an annual analysis from the prestigious medical journal, underscores the vast and growing costs of fossil fuel burning on health.
Climate-influenced disasters are making people sick. When wildfire smoke from massive fires in Canada blanketed the U.S. in the summer of 2023, emergency rooms saw a spike in admissions for lung problems but also heart attacks and other health issues.

Burning fossil fuels has driven climate change, and now climate change is costing people their health and increasingly their lives, says a new report from the prestigious medical journal the Lancet. The eighth annual Lancet Countdown, an international analysis that tracks nearly 50 different health-focused issues affected by climate change, calls for an immediate wind-down of fossil fuel use.

"We're currently at 1.14 degree Celsius of global indicator heating, and we're already seeing climate change claiming lives and livelihoods in every part of the world," says Marina Romanello, a scientist at University College, London, and the lead

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