By David Sussin
The challenge with global warming may not be our ability to adjust to the hotter climate, but the deadly toxins that thrive in it.
Millions of people will die from viral infections this year. You know their names – the killers are infamous. They make the front page: COVID-19, Ebola, rabies, influenza, hepatitis, measles, yellow fever, polio, HIV – it's a familiar if detestable list.
We have massive resources devoted to stopping viruses. Some have been basically eradicated. Mainstream science has given us vaccines for nine of the deadliest threats. And efforts continue to find them for the other two (HIV and hepatitis C).
But there are other killers floating in the air, with names like Aspergillus and Cryptococcus. They don't make headlines. But they kill over 1.5 million people a year.
They are fungi. And guess how many have an approved vaccine?
Zero.
Less than 10 percent of the 4 million fungi species on the planet have even been described, let alone genetically sequenced for vaccine research.
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We are flying blind to what species of fungal toxin might be growing out there.
Why the blind spot? Fungi love tropical or subtropical regions, and they feast on humans with weakened health conditions. In other words, low-income countries in the Third World.
The developed world – North America, Western Europe, and Australia – just don't see these outbreaks. At least, we didn't used to.
There's growing evidence that while we ignore the Third World, its climate is coming to us.
In 2012, a deadly fungus invaded Iowa. The state had one of the hottest summers on record in the U.S., leading to a severe drought.
Where usually summer in the Iowa farmland hits 85F, 2012 saw temperatures soar to 108 degrees for weeks. Suddenly, the climate was ideal for the fungus Aspergillus. The corn crops were infected with elevated levels of aflatoxin, the toxic chemical produced by the fungus in these extreme conditions.
The FDA caught it in time. Shipments of grain were rejected due to dangerous levels of aflatoxin. Corn had to be removed from the supply chain before it was fed to animals, which would end up being food for American consumers.
The economic losses for farmers nationally from the outbreak exceeded $1 billion. But the contamination was stopped before it entered the human food chain in any form.
It's a good thing. Aflatoxin is a dangerous, cancer-causing poison that hides in food. We would have never known.
And consumed at the levels found in the grain that summer, it could cause acute liver damage leading to vomiting and jaundice and even liver failure. For children or people with underlying health conditions it would be fatal.
The incident was a wakeup call.
And a study published last month (May 2025) by the University of Manchester indicates the danger is only getting worse. The paper is based on fungal DNA data collected in an international database, along with future climate modeling, to study climate change-driven shifts in aspergillus habitats.
Based on their modeling, rising global temperatures will alter ecological niches – places where these fungi live now because the climate is a perfect match. As extreme weather events like Iowa's 2012 drought happen more frequently, the distribution of the aspergillus species will spread.
Fungal spores will increase in the air in developed countries, their pathogens spreading freely.
According to the study, as temperatures rise in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, a killer fungus will spread, causing fatal lung problems for vulnerable people and infecting millions.
While inhaling the fungus's spores does not make everyone ill, those with conditions such as asthma, cystic fibrosis or a weakened immune system remain at risk. Most disturbingly, the species grows quickly in high temperatures and loves the 98.6F internal temperature of the human body.
Ironically, in the Midwest they currently have pesticides that act as antifungals, clearing the crops of the toxin. But the more the pesticides are used, the stronger the fungi evolve to overcome them. By the time climate shifts and Aspergillus arrives, the pesticides may no longer have any effect on the toxin.
Researcher Norman van Rhijn, co-author of the study, warns that, "the world is approaching a tipping point where the spread of fungal pathogens could become the norm." According to Rhijn, "We're talking about hundreds of thousands of lives, and continental shifts in species distributions."
The challenge with global warming may not be our ability to adjust to the hotter climate, but the deadly toxins that thrive in it.
Sources:
‘https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-6545782/v1
https://www.ft.com/content/506f5a03-8520-40e1-aee3-a6e6427f68c0