Examining uncertainties in the linkage between global climate change and potential human health impacts in the western USA -- Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) as a case study

Industrial societies have altered the earth`s environment in ways that could have important, long-term ecological, economic, and health implications. In this paper the authors define, characterize, and evaluate parameter and outcome uncertainties using a model that links global climate change with predictions of chemical exposure and human health risk in the western region of the US. They illustrate the impact of uncertainty about global climate change on such potential secondary outcomes using as a case study the public health consequences related to the behavior environmentally of hexachlorobenzene (HCB), an ubiquitous multimedia pollutant. They begin by constructing a matrix that reveals the linkage between global environmental change and potential regional human-health effects that might be induced directly and/or indirectly by HCB released into the air and water. This matrix is useful for translating critical uncertainties into terms that can be understood and used by policy makers to formulate strategies against potential adverse irreversible health and economic consequences. Specifically, the authors employ a combined uncertainty/sensitivity analysis to investigate how the HCB that has been released is affected by increasing atmospheric temperature and the accompanying climate alterations that are anticipated and how such uncertainty propagates to affect the expected magnitude and calculational precision of estimates of associated potential human exposures and health effects