Wildfires, peat fires and controlled burns on farmlands kill 339,000 people worldwide each year, said a study released on Saturday that is the first to estimate a death toll for landscape fires.
Most of those deaths are concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 157,000 people die as a result of being exposed to such fires annually, with southeast Asia ranking second with 110,000 deaths.
“I was surprised at our estimate being so high when you consider that the exposure to fire smoke is quite intermittent for most people,” said lead author Fay Johnston, of the University of Tasmania.
Photo: EPA
“Even in southeast Asia and Africa, [fire] is a seasonal phenomenon. It is not year round,” Johnston said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Vancouver where she presented her research.
The study, which Johnston said was the first of its kind to attempt to estimate a death toll from wildfires and landscape burns, was published on Saturday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
Researchers looked at the number of deaths from all causes in areas that were exposed to heavy smoke and landscape fires between 1997 and 2006.
They used satellite data and chemical transport models to assess the health impacts of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, a major byproduct of landscape fire smoke.
The number of deaths from wildfires came in far below the previously estimated global tolls for indoor air pollution at 2 million people a year and urban air pollution at 800,000.
However, the study authors said their findings indicated that “fire emissions are an important contributor to global mortality.”
The research also suggested a significant link between climate and fire mortality.
About twice as many people died during El Nino years when the surface ocean temperature rises in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean (averaging 532,000 deaths) as during cooler La Nina years (averaging 262,000 deaths).
Deaths could be reduced if people stopped burning tropical rainforests in order to harvest palm oil and other products, Johnston said.
However, fires will only get more severe in the future, according to Mike Flannigan, a professor at the University of Alberta and a government scientist with Natural Resources Canada, who has conducted research to model how severe fires will be by the years 2081 to 2090.
Using a variable he called “cumulative daily severity rating,” Flannigan’s projections show that fire activity is “increasing over most of the globe, particularly the northern hemisphere, by a factor of two to three.”
That means “significant increases” in fire activity should be expected by the end of this century as the globe gets warmer, he said.
“It is the extreme weather that drives fire activity and if we expect more extremes in the future, which we do, then it is only going to get worse,” Flannigan told reporters. “It is getting to the point where it is beyond our control.”
Already, between 350 million to 450 million hectares are burned every year in wildfires, covering an area about the size of India and costing billions of dollars to fight and contain.
“The risk to life and infrastructure is only going to increase under climate change because of a warming climate,” Flannigan said.
Firefighting methods such as aerial suppression may have to be abandoned because they will not work against hotter, more intense fires, he said.
“It is going to be incredibly difficult in the future to manage forest fires because the intensity of fires is going to be increasing and that changes the strategy of putting fires out,” he said.
Instead, people who live near wooded areas can expect more frequent evacuations and community builders should consider fire-resistant home materials and crafting better fire guards around communities, he said.
Governments may need to consider stronger measures in prevention, education, penalties and restricted fire zones, he said.
“We are going to see more fire in the future, that is the bottom line. A warmer world is going to see more fire,” Flannigan said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not