A woman watches a forest fire approach her home in Porto Velho, Brazil, in August 2020. Ueslei Marcelino (Portal)
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Darkness reigned in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo in 2019. This did not happen due to the usual parameters of day and night, but because the particles from the fires in the Amazon jungle had reached the populated city and made everything appear gray. The incident, which raised many questions about the public health impact of fires, also stuck in the mind of Eimy Bonilla, a doctor and researcher in environmental sciences and technology at Harvard University, USA.
“There was already a lot of evidence, scientific articles, that talked about how the big cities were affected by this smoke,” says Bonilla. Having already studied the fires in the Amazon, she also wanted to know how this phenomenon affects the health of the indigenous people. “What about the people who are in the vicinity of these fires and whose information isn’t on the medical records because many don’t have access to the system?” he then asked.
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He focused on the PM2.5 particles left by the smoke from the fires when moved by the air; These are particles so fine that they are only 2.5 microns in diameter and up to twenty times smaller than the diameter of a hair. Because they get to the lungs faster and bypass the various barriers the body needs to protect us, exposure to these particles is associated with premature death and respiratory illness. They are also associated with cardiovascular problems, cancer, metabolic disorders, mental health problems and a loss of work days.
Using a model combining how air moves through the atmosphere during fires, demographic information from the Amazon basin, and a formula about the impact of PM2.5 on premature deaths, she and her team concluded that most Fires occur risk are the indigenous communities of the Amazon. While there were about 12,000 premature deaths each year across South America between 2014 and 2019, the period they analyzed, for those residing on indigenous territory alone the number is about 230 premature deaths.
A more forceful view, Bonilla says, is that while smoke exposure is responsible for two premature deaths per 100,000 people across South America, in indigenous areas it is four deaths per 100,000 people. I mean it doubles. “This is a big problem because, as we know, these are very small but severely affected populations. It’s worrying,” explains the expert and co-author of the study, published in Environmental Research: Health.
The conclusions also vary by country. The study shows that the urban population in Brazil, Argentina and Colombia has the highest excess mortality from fire smoke. In Peru and Bolivia, on the other hand, there are more premature deaths related to this problem in indigenous communities. To cite another example, data added between 2014 and 2019 suggests that smoke pollution from fires across Brazil is responsible for nearly 39,000 deaths and that there are 500 premature deaths in Peru’s indigenous areas alone.
The situation will become even more concerning if the trend continues as it is today: more fires fueled by human activities such as mining, logging and agriculture. It should not be taken into account that climate change and high temperatures increase the probability of fires. Since 2002, the study says, the annual number of fires in the Amazon has twice exceeded 600,000 in 2004 and 2007. And although it began to decline between 2004 and 2013, reaching 264,000 fires a year, it shot up again to nearly 500,000 in 2020. Fires that, if they paint big cities gray, are because they previously did too have done to the small neighboring towns in which they arose.