The Indonesian haze that covered many countries in Southeast Asia for weeks past year may have caused more than 100,000 deaths, a new study found.
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Indonesia’s smog drifts to other Southeast Asian countries, and 10,000 of those estimated deaths were in Malaysia and Singapore.
The study – which was hailed by environmental group Greenpeace as “groundbreaking” – considered only the health impact on adults and restricts itself to the effects of health-threatening fine particulate matter, often referred to as PM2.5, rather than all toxins that would be in the smoke from burning peatlands and forests.
Last fall, Indonesia went through the worst outbreak of forest fires in almost two decades, as unusually warm and dry temperatures brought by El Niño exacerbated fire conditions. It predicts 91,600 deaths in Indonesia, another 6,500 in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore. The air pollution or haze has been an annual problem for the past 18 years in Indonesia.
“In 2006, burning in industrial concessions to clear land for oil palm and timber plantations accounted for 40 percent of total fire emissions in Sumatra and 25 percent in Kalimantan (Indonesian Borneo)”.
“The goal of this work is to offer something that can be used now by policy makers, by stake holders, to try to aid on these [firefighting] efforts, because it seems that is just an overwhelming challenge to deal with these fires when they start”, Koplitz said. In 2015, the haze is believed to have last several months after drifting across South East Asia.
The story Toxic haze from Indonesian forest fires may have caused 100,000 deaths: report first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.
In addition to the 2015 fires, the independent team of twelve public health and atmospheric modelling scientists also examined 2006, another bad haze year. The number of deaths is an estimate derived from a complex analysis that has not yet been validated by analysis of official data on mortality.
With the haze once again returning this year, the government must step forward and take firm action against forest clearing and peatland drainage for plantations, Yuyun said.
The Indonesian Medial Association’s West Kalimantan chapter said Indonesia faces an overall decline in the health of future generations with social and economic consequences if the situation is not tackled.
Nursyam Ibrahim, from the Indonesian Medical Association’s West Kalimantan chapter, said “We are the doctors who care for the vulnerable groups exposed to toxic smoke in every medical center, and we know how very bad it is to see the disease symptoms experienced by babies and children in our care”.
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The new study to be published in journal Environmental Research Letters, which combined satellite data with models of health impacts from smoke exposure and readings from pollution monitoring stations, estimated that 100,300 had died prematurely due to last year’s fires across the three countries.
