Climate and the Skin

The Skin’s Many Barriers and Climate Change

October 9, 2020 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Ancient Fishapods, the earliest vertebrates to leave the seas for life on dry land, can teach us about the evolution of skin's many barriers, especially our waterproofing barrier that prevents the loss of water from our cells to the dry atmosphere. (Tiktaalik roseae by Zina Deretsky, Courtesy: National Science Foundation) — Fishapods – fish-like creatures using fins as legs – were the earliest vertebrates to attempt life on dry land. Drawing of Tiktaalik roseae by Zina Deretsky, courtesy: National Science Foundation

Skin’s Many Barriers And How Climate Change May Affect Them

Skin has many barriers: it keeps us waterproof, it holds back invading microorganisms, and it protects us from mechanical injury, from toxic rays of sunlight and foreign chemicals in our environment. Each of skin’s many barriers may be impacted as our environment changes as a result of global warming. To understand how skin will have to adapt to climate change we need to consider how these barrier’s work to keep us well.

The Skin’s Water Barrier Came First

Life on our planet began in its seas – a warm womb with a salinity that is close to that of a cell’s interior. But upon leaving the osmotic neutrality of the seas for life on land, our fish-like ancestors, the fishapods, suddenly would have encountered an entirely different world. There they faced a steep osmotic gradient between the much drier air outside and their water-based interior. They now required a water-proof covering to prevent the otherwise inevitable dehydration.

With that first step onto dry land – dawned a new evolutionary imperative, for them and for all their progeny who would follow. They required a means to prevent the loss of water from their cells into the arid atmosphere that now surrounded them.

Thus, before the grand experiment of terrestrial life could truly begin, this imperative – the need for a water barrier – had to be solved.

Indeed, all land dwelling species have had to evolve a water barrier on their external coverings (or ‘integuments’) – from the cuticles coating the leaves of plants, to the exoskeletons of insects, or to the scales of reptiles and to our human skin – in order to maintain their water-based way of life in a dry world.

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Q&A: COVID 19, Climate Change, And The Skin

August 18, 2020 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Q: COVID-19, climate change and skin? Are they related to each other, and if so how and why?

A: Let’s look first at COVID-19 and climate change, and see how they are and are not related.

COVID-19 was not directly the result of climate change

We have no evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic was directly caused by climate change. Our changing climate is due to an increased burden of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere, largely as a result of our combustion of fossil fuels for energy. These trapped gases are warming our planet and disrupting the usual climatic patterns. We do know that some previously tropical viruses, like Dengue and Zika, are spreading into temperate zones as a result of climate change, but this does not appear to be behind the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

To quote the World Health Organization (WHO): “There is currently no conclusive evidence that either weather (short term variations in meteorological conditions) or climate (long-term averages) have a strong influence on transmission”…of COVID-19.

But climate change and the COVID-19 epidemic are interrelated in a number of ways.

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Health Impacts of Wood Smoke and PM2.5 Pollution on Your Skin

January 12, 2020 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Curling up with a book by a blazing wood fire is a cozy image, but the PM2.5 pollution from the wood smoke has serious negative consequences for our health and skin | Mary L. Williams, MD | EliasandWilliams.com

Picture this: A person enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and a good book while resting in an arm chair in front of a blazing fireplace. A cozy image of the winter season? Perhaps, but it’s becoming increasing clear that this picture is not a healthy one. That wood, which is burning so brightly, is spewing forth an invisible battalion of minute particles to pollute the air we breathe and that surrounds our skin. Wood smoke generates PM 2.5 pollution.

‘PM_2.5’ stands for particulate matter less than 2.5 microns – which is less than 1/100 000 of an inch – in diameter.

PM_2.5pollution is well known to cause flares of asthma and to be harmful for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic lung disorders. Inhalation of these particlesis also dangerous for those with preexisting heart disease, raising blood pressure and, indeed, precipitating heart attacks. PM_2.5pollution is also linked to chronic kidney disease and lung cancer. It is dangerous for pregnant women, as well. These particles are also linked to miscarriages, prematurity, and lower birth weight babies.

PM_2.5 pollution is bad for the skin, too.

PM_2.5and even smaller, ‘ultrafine’ particles enter the skin. PM_2.5can enter via the hair follicles, the even smaller, ultrafine particles can even penetrate through lipid membranes of the stratum corneum. Particles can also access skin through the blood after being absorbed through the lungs.

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Skin Cancer: A Subtle Sign Of Climate Change

March 29, 2019 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

A patch of daffodils in full bloom on the Sonoma California coast in late January 2019. A shift towards an earlier spring is one of the subtle, but very important signs of climate change. An increased incidence of skin cancers is a health consequence that will only appear after many years, because of the long time lag between the injury to the skin and the development of a cancer.

Photo by Mary L. Williams

Subtle Signs Of Climate Change

Amidst the drumbeats last Fall, which seemed to bring nothing but bad news about our changing climate and its perils to human health, came one small ray of hope. A new study out of Yale University demonstrated that nearly 3/4ths of American now believe in climate change. Not surprisingly, it was the calamitous effects of extreme weather events – the floods and the forest fires, for example – that largely accounted for this new wave of understanding.

Such environmental catastrophes are the big red flags of climate change – and, of course, we need to pay attention to them. But there are also quieter, more subtle signs of our changing world that are equally portentous.

During a recent break in our winter rains, I seized the opportunity to take a walk along a coastal bluff about 80 miles north of San Francisco. Taking a spur off the main trail, I was surprised to come upon a field of daffodils, as I rounded the bend. They lay near what appeared to be the remains of the foundation of a small building – perhaps an old sheepherder’s hut from an earlier time. The daffodils may have been planted by someone who hoped to tame and humanize an otherwise bleak and wind torn landscape. Though long abandoned by humans, the flowers had carried on, undisturbed by grazing deer – growing, blooming, and withering in annual cycles, year after year, for decade after decade, thereafter.

Just as a choking blanket of smoke last Fall brought home to many Californians the realization that climate change was the real arsonist behind those terrifying forest fires — so too, did the sighting of a beautiful patch of daffodils, blooming ‘out of season’, remind me that the hand of the demon of climate change is everywhere, operating at every level.

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Pollution Affects Skin, Too

January 20, 2019 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Urban smog in China. Hazy conditions due to air pollution are rich in particulate matter, coated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and in ozone. Both particulate matter and ozone pollution are linked to skin aging and flares of eczema. Photo by Mary L. Williams — Urban smog in China

Pollution Affects Skin

It’s common knowledge that air pollution is bad for our lungs. Individuals with asthma or other chronic lung ailments are particularly vulnerable to its effects. But how often have we thought about the harm that pollution could be doing to our skin? Don’t feel guilty if you haven’t given this much thought, because dermatologists, themselves, have paid little attention to it– at least not until recently, that is. And one thing seems obvious at the outset. Unlike our eyes, which itch and water on days when the pollution index soars, or our lungs which may tighten if we have sensitive lungs – skin gives us no warnings that it is under attack.

The effects of pollution on our skin are typically insidious, their onset delayed.

Yet, several recent studies have shown that polluted air is bad for the skin. Air pollution increases office visits for acne, and is associated with flares of eczema (atopic dermatitis) in children and the increased prevalence of other eczemas in older adults. Air pollution is also linked to the development of pigmented spots on the face.

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