Impacts of climate change on the risks of biological and chemical environmental contaminants from agriculture to human health

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Climate change models predict that average UK temperatures will increase by up to 5 degrees celsius by the 2080s, that winters will be wetter and summers drier and that intense rain events will be more frequent (UKCIP2002). These changes are likely to have important impacts on human health, both by changing the prevalence and types of human disease across the UK and by effects on chemical usage (WHO. 2003). Climate change is also likely to change the scale and variety of crop pests and diseases which may have a knock-on effect on food production. Dispersal of novel pathogens and contaminants could also increase human, animal and plant exposures. The future risks of pathogens and contaminants in the environment to humans could therefore be very different from current risks. We propose a workshop to bring together experts in a broad range of the key disciplines needed for estimating future risks of pathogens and contaminants. The workshop will include scientists with expertise in climate change, human and animal disease, plant disease, chemical usage, chemical exposure modelling, pathogen exposure modelling, environmental economics, ecotoxicology, soil science and toxicology. The workshop will assess the potential impacts of climate change on the risks of pathogens and contaminants of agricultural origin on human health. The integration of skills will allow an holistic systems approach that takes account of interactions between the system components. The output of the project will be a series of web-based documents reporting the findings of the workshop and providing recommendations for future research and management strategies.