FLOODS don’t just wreck your house, they may also affect your long-term health.
Record heavy rains have flooded thousands of properties in southern England since December (see “UK must abandon or adapt in face of floods“). There have been a few deaths from the storms but none from the floods.
But that could be just part of the story. “Negative effects on well-being may persist for months or even years after a flood,” says the National Flood Emergency Framework for England.
The main evidence for this comes from a study after a flood in Bristol in 1968. In the following year, death rates rose 50 per cent and hospital admissions more than doubled – but only among people who had been flooded, not unflooded neighbours. Studies of hurricane Katrina in the US, and floods in Hunan, China, in 1998, found similar effects.
People forced to abandon their homes for months suffer intense stress, says Simon McCarthy at Middlesex University London, causing anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and potentially worsening physical ailments. However, a 2011 retrospective study in the UK found no increase in deaths after floods between 1994 and 2005.
A health registry to compare those affected by the latest floods with those who weren’t would help clarify the issue. But no decision to fund such a registry has yet been taken, says Virginia Murray of Public Health England.
This article appeared in print under the headline “The waters go but the hurt stays”