Tobacco and fossil fuel threatening public health

Masum Al Jaki :
Like smoking, the people’s addiction to fossil fuels is incredibly damaging to our health. In fact, cigarette smoking, particularly the indoor version is a serious health hazard. Its outdoor exposures, what we experience most in the day to day outings bear the most toxic fall-outs on the public health in general and of the children in particular. “According to the World Health Organization, air pollution from burning fossil fuels kills more than 7 million people each year around the world. This is more than the total of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Although it was no small battle, the health sector ultimately had success in fighting the tobacco wars of the 1960s by divesting from tobacco companies, educating leaders and building broad community coalitions.  
Coal combustion is directly linked to cancer, respiratory disease, heart disease and brain damage in children. Coal mining is also one of the deadliest professions, causing 8 percent of all occupational deaths worldwide.
On top of all these localized effects, burning fossil fuels is the leading cause of climate change, which in turn contributes to a range of health effects such as heat stroke, asthma, waterborne diseases such as diarrhea, and vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever and malaria.
Comparing coal, oil, and gas addiction to the last generation’s effort to kick the tobacco habit, doctors say that quitting would be the best thing humanity can do for its long-term health.
The tobacco industry makes more than $ 5,000 in profits for every death caused by smoking. And we think that by holding it to account for this financially, Stop Smoking Services can be given the investment they need, to make sure everyone who wants to use them. So we should launch campaign, asking the Government to make Big Tobacco Cough Up and pay for the damage it causes.
Evidence shows that every $1 spent on these services saves around $10 in healthcare costs and health gains in the long term. This is because the NHS won’t have to spend as much treating tobacco-related illnesses’, and fewer people will suffer from smoking-related illness’, leading to fewer smoking-related sick days and lost productivity.
The tobacco industry makes billions in profits every year from its deadly products. By simply charging the industry around 1pence per cigarette they sell, this could inject an extra $ 500m into public health services and mass media quit campaigns to help save thousands of lives.
The cost of fossil fuels goes beyond what we pay when we purchase the products. From excavation through transportation to utilization, fossil fuels have devastating impacts on environment, human health, species and ecosystems.
Pollution, asthma, bronchitis, cancer, nasal congestion, pulmonary inflammation, acidic rain, earthquakes, pipeline explosions, hazardously abandoned infrastructure are just but a few of the impacts. Of all the impacts, global warming is the most catastrophic, widespread and inestimably costly.
The financial and emotional cost of interring loved ones who die in global warming instigated conflicts and natural disasters or hospital bills for those injured; the cost of maintaining refugee camps for the displaced; the losses incurred when crops fail or economic downfall experienced when the number of tourists to Africa plummet; the costs incurred when we dig bore holes several meters into the ground to offset water scarcity… are all climate related.
First, we need to make climate change a public health priority. It wasn’t until US Surgeon General Luther Terry issued his warning that tobacco was harmful to our health in 1964 that everything changed.
A watershed moment in this country, the first surgeon general’s report on smoking and health marks the moment the public tide began to turn against tobacco, eventually saving 8 million people from premature smoking-related deaths.
World Health Organisation called climate change the greatest health threat of our time. That may be putting it mildly, since both the health of people and the planet are at stake.
The health effects of fossil fuels are clear. We need the surgeon general to issue a warning that climate change – driven by the burning of fossil fuels – is dangerous to our health. Once people understand the health impacts of climate change, we need to turn that comprehension into something more.
On top of perpetrating climate change and making huge profits out of human suffering, fossil fuel companies knowingly mislead the public by hiding and manipulating crucial information and have manipulated climate negotiations despite knowing the impacts of fossil fuels on climate and human health.
The fossil fuel companies should either be fined or a legally binding framework should be established to make the companies finance Loss and Damage Mechanism including the cost of establishing the accurate cost of loss and damages or both.
Fossil fuel companies need to be held accountable for public health costs. State attorneys general banded together to hold tobacco companies responsible for their public health costs, and we need a similar effort to recoup the health costs of pollution from fossil fuels. This money could help communities create healthy energy infrastructure and prepare for the coming storms of climate change.