Climate Change to Cause More Kidney Stones in East Bay, Scientists Say

As if we did not have enough to worry about, a coalition of groups including the American Medical Association and Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, announced at a meeting in Washington this week that an unanticipated result of climate change is a likely increase in the incidence of kidney stones in many areas of the country, including Northern California. The groups met to press for curbs on carbon emissions and called on President Obama and lawmakers to incorporate health effects into considerations on tackling climate change .

Highlighting a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it seems kidney stones today are most prevalent in certain geographic areas in the United States, especially in the kidney stone "belt" of the southeastern United States. Using data of predicted temperature change from global warming, the researchers used two separate models in their study to predict changes in the incidence of kidney stones in the United States. Each model indicates an increase in kidney stones in Northern California.