Air pollution from months of wildfire smoke killed an estimated 3,560 people in Indonesia in September, double August's toll, according to new research by the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). About 57.8 million Indonesians breathed unhealthy to hazardous air that month.
The study estimates deaths from short-term exposure to PM2.5, fine particles that the World Health Organization says enter the lungs and bloodstream and raise the risk of disease and early death. Most of the deaths were in Indonesian Borneo, Java, Sumatra and the east of the country.
Pollution from power plants, industry and vehicles caused another estimated 1,750 deaths in September, the researchers say, for a total of 5,310 in a country of about 290 million.
National PM2.5 levels in September were more than seven times the WHO annual guideline, ten times in Sumatra and 24 times in Kalimantan on Borneo. More than 330,000 people across the country are suffering acute respiratory problems.
The fires have burned for months amid a severe El Nino drought. The forest monitor Nusantara Atlas says more than 1.9 million hectares of forest burned in the nine months to September, a figure the government has neither confirmed nor denied.
The haze has spread to Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and East Timor. Experts blame slash-and-burn land clearing by timber, palm oil and mining companies for most of the fires.
Photo: a satellite view of wildfire smoke over Indonesia, NASA / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
Source: Bangla Tribune
Comments
(0)