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A large nuclear war may cause severe global environmental disruption, which is commonly known as nuclear winter. The effects may be catastrophic for human health. The field of public health has substantial capacity to understand and mitigate these harms, but it has thus far done little. Therefore, this paper outlines a public health research and policy agenda to address the threat of nuclear winter. The paper is co-authored by Seth Baum of GCRI and Andreas Vilhelmsson of the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Lund University.
Any nuclear war could be catastrophic. Likewise, the best option, if possible, is to prevent nuclear war from occurring in the first place. However, there is no guarantee that nuclear war will continue to be avoided. The potential for future nuclear war is demonstrated in GCRI’s prior research on the probability of nuclear war [1]. Given the possibility of nuclear war, it is important to study and prepare for its potential effects.
The global environmental effects of nuclear war are an effect of the intense fires that can be produced by nuclear explosions. The smoke may enter the stratosphere—the second layer of the atmosphere above the clouds—and then spread around the world. It may remain aloft for several years, blocking incoming sunlight. This cools the surface, hence the phenomenon is known as nuclear winter. Additional effects can include reduced precipitation and increased ultraviolet radiation. The severity of the environmental effects would depend on the size of the nuclear war and would also vary across locations around the world.
Impacts on human health could include malnutrition, infectious disease, and more. However, the health effects have not yet been systematically studied. Therefore, the paper proposes several directions for public health research on nuclear winter:
• Risk assessment, to study the total health effects of nuclear winter, such as by applying the Global Burden of Diseases Injuries, and Risk Factors (GBD) framework, which is already used for war and armed conflict.
• Epidemiological forecasting, to assess the potential for disease outbreaks, such as by adapting prior research on other environmental health threats.
• Attribution science, to formulate models for characterizing the health harms that may be caused by nuclear winter, which could also proceed by adapting prior research on other environmental health threats.
• Geographic analysis, to characterize how the health effects of nuclear winter may vary around the world, such as by applying geographic information systems (GIS) tools.
Research such as this would help to clarify what public health policy measures could be taken to address the health impacts of nuclear winter. Meanwhile, the paper proposes several public health policy initiatives that may be helpful:
• Resource stockpiles, including food, water, vaccines, and other medicines to enable populations to survive until environmental conditions improve.
• Training and capacity building, so that the people tasked with emergency response to nuclear winter are able to succeed despite the major challenges they may face.
• Nuclear security policy, in which public health experts and institutions contribute their perspectives on nuclear winter to broader policy conversations about nuclear weapons.
Some of these research and policy activities would be synergistic with certain more established public health topics, such as armed conflict and global warming. Leveraging these synergies may make it easier for public health communities to allocate some of its scarce time and resources to nuclear winter. Exactly how much public health communities should work on nuclear winter is beyond the scope of the paper, but it is clear that the current near-zero effort is not enough. There is simply too much at stake.
The paper extends GCRI’s research on the aftermath of global catastrophe and nuclear war.
[1] See in particular Baum, de Neufville, and Barrett (2018), A model for the probability of nuclear war, Global Catastrophic Risk Institute Working Paper 18-1.
Academic citation:
Vilhelmsson, Andreas & Seth D. Baum, 2023. Public health and nuclear winter: Addressing a catastrophic threat. Journal of Public Health Policy, vol. 44, no. 3 (September), pages 360-369, DOI 10.1057/s41271-023-00416-7.
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