The Impacts of Climate Change and Age Factors on the Food-borne Disease

Abstract

This study modeled the relation between changes in temperature and precipitation and occurrence of infectious enteritis by age based on the health insurance claim data from Health Insurance Review & Assessment Service (HIRA) from 2004 to 2008 and climate data measured by Automatic Weather System in Korea Meteorological Administration. The correlation was observed between food poisoning and temperature. The slope before and after the inflection point refers to the frequency of food poisoning during the daytime by city, county and district with increase in unit temperature. In a model in which both elderly and non-elderly people were considered, temperature rose by 1℃ after 24.3℃. Therefore, the frequency of the disease during the daytime by city, county and district also increased by 5.7. In sum, as average daytime temperature increases by 1℃ after 24.3℃, the frequency of the food borne presumptive eteritis during the daytime rose by 5% (a group of non-elderly people (7.7 cases) was 4.3 times greater than a group of elderly people (1.8 cases)). If Korea’s mean annual temperature increases by 3.2℃ after 24.3℃ in 2050, the frequency of the food borne presumptive disease would rise by 16%.