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Editorial| Volume 106, P164-165, March 2023

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Seizure disorders and climate change: Everyone's problem

  • Alistair Wardrope
    Correspondence
    Corresponding author at: Department of Neurology, Room L20, Royal Hallamshire Hospital, Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JF, United Kingdom.
    Affiliations
    Academic Neurology Unit, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Department of Neurology, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
    Search for articles by this author
  • Markus Reuber
    Affiliations
    Academic Neurology Unit, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

    Department of Neurology, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, United Kingdom
    Search for articles by this author
      Climate change – and the profligate, inequitable, fossil fuel-driven consumption that causes it – is everyone's problem. The present volume of Seizure features an article with testimonies from the members of the ILAE Epilepsy Climate Change Commission (CCC) [
      • Aledo-Serrano A
      Taking action on climate change: testimonials and position statement from the international league against epilepsy climate change commission.
      ], which make clear that this includes those living and working with epilepsy and other seizure disorders. Climate change affects human health in myriad ways – through its direct effects on heat waves and extreme weather events; through its indirect effects on natural systems, such as changing land use, and distribution of infectious diseases and their vectors; and through disruption of social dynamics – intersecting with other political, social, and economic determinants of health to exacerbate food and water insecurity, political instability, and forced migration [

      Pörtner H.O., Roberts D.C., Tignor M.M.B., et al., editors Climate change 2022: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. IPCC; 2022.

      ,
      • Watts N.
      • Adger W.N.
      • Agnolucci P.
      • et al.
      Health and climate change: policy responses to protect public health.
      ]. The fossil fuel dependence that overwhelmingly causes climate change also affects health more directly – from local environmental degradation and community disruption at the point of extraction, to the 3.6 million annual deaths attributable to ambient air pollution from fossil fuel combustion [
      • Beagley J.
      Cradle to grave: the health harms of fossil fuel dependence and the case for a just phase-out.
      ].
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