Here’s an interesting twist to the way humans affect the environment: Deforestation May Make Humans More Vulnerable To Infection

Classic theory holds that disease is a part of the proximity to the forest. Therefore, moving the forest farther away (by destroying it) will reduce the incidence of infectious disease. On the surface, it makes sense. The forest is home to lots of insects that carry some weird stuff. Remove the forest and you remove the breeding grounds for these insects and therefore you remove the diseases they carry. However, here’s what researchers found while researching American Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (ACL) in Costa Rica.

Putting everything together, the researchers discovered that in fact there is a relationship between ACL and deforestation, but it’s not the simple, “less forest, less disease” relationship that previously was believed to exist. Instead, there’s a complex connection with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a periodic ocean-atmosphere fluctuation in the Pacific Ocean that is an important cause of inter-annual climate variability around the world and also influences disease cycles. In highly deforested counties, socially marginalized human populations are more vulnerable to ENSO’s effects, and disease incidence actually is higher, the analysis suggests.

It’s interesting and another feather in the cap of those that want to preserve the environment. It likely has something to do with keeping the immune system humming along, similar to how today’s overly sanitized kids have weak immune systems due to never giving them a workout.

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Tags: deforestation, illness, immunity, nature