Fires in the Amazon cause millions of health problems – 06/04/2023 – Environment

In the novel by the Portuguese author Valter Hugo Mãe released in 2022, “As Diseases of Brazil”, fire is seen by the indigenous people of the fictional Amazonian village Abaeté as evil spirits of the forest, since it licks all life and causes death.

Outside of fiction, the fires in the Amazon also bring serious health problems to the populations of indigenous territories and other cities that can persist for years.

A study was able to measure for the first time the damage associated with fires in indigenous lands in the Legal Amazon and observed an estimated impact of about 15 million cases of respiratory infections and cardiovascular diseases per year with an estimated cost of US$ 2 billion (about BRL 10.1 billion).

Considering that the pollutant particles dispersed by fires can spread up to 500 km from the initial focus, the damage to health is felt in several other states and countries of the South American continent.

On the other hand, keeping the forest standing helps to absorb these pollutants and helps to prevent cases of respiratory problems and costs to health services.

The study, published this Thursday (6th) in the scientific journal Communications Earth & Environment, from the Nature group, was conducted by researchers from Brazil, Mexico and the United States, with financial support from the Ford Foundation.

Before publication, a conference for journalists was organized last Wednesday (5) with the presence of Carlos Nobre, climate scientist, Paula Prist, researcher at the Ecohealth Alliance (USA) and main author of the study, Patrícia Pinho, scientific director of Ipam (Brazilian Institute for Environmental Research in the Amazon), Marcia Macedo, director of the water program and researcher at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, Dinamam Tuxã, executive coordinator of Apib (Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil) and Maypatxi Apurinã, monitoring manager territory of Coiab (Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon).

To assess the health effects of fire in Amazonian indigenous territories, the scientists first used satellite data from two NASA fire systems and correlated these with the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere from 2010 to 2019.

These pollutants are measured by the so-called concentration of particulate matter of dimension 2.5 (PM2.5). The WHO (World Health Organization) recommends a maximum limit of 5 µg/m³ (micrograms per cubic meter) of PM2.5.

Then, they observed the incidence of respiratory infections in the same period caused by air pollution or by inhaling these substances, using data from DataSUS, from the Ministry of Health. The scientists considered infection rates in the region’s 772 municipalities, not just those adjacent to indigenous lands.

According to Prist, the analysis of respiratory infections in the study included both patients affected by exposure to acute PM2.5 (at the fire site), whose effects lead to emergency care at health services, and those who, due to annual exposure to particles, had chronic illness.

Crossing the data, the researchers saw a higher incidence of infections due to respiratory diseases in the years with the highest occurrence of fires (2011, 2013 and 2010). The average annual incidence in the period was 587 cases per 100,000 inhabitants.

In indigenous territories, the recorded rate was 227 cases per 100,000 inhabitants – around 143,000 cases per year. The incidence of new respiratory infections grew by 165% in indigenous territories from 2010 to 2019, the latter being the peak of the highest incidence (also with the highest occurrence of fires).

Some places, such as the Kayabi (Mato Grosso), Panará (Pará) and Sete de Setembro (on the border between Rondônia and Mato Grosso) indigenous territories, represented the highest incidence of respiratory cases.

For the researcher, despite some peaks represented by an increase in the occurrence of fires in 2013 and 2019, the analysis considered hospitalizations from year to year precisely to eliminate these possible points “outside the curve”.

“Every time we have a fire, it has an effect on public health and, although in years with more fires the effect is greater, in our analysis we saw a clear correlation between the incidence of respiratory disease and the emission of pollutants”, says Paula Prist .

The research estimated that more than 1.7 tons of pollutants per year are released only with the fires in the Amazon, not counting the fires in other Brazilian biomes.

On the other hand, the Amazon forest has the estimated potential to absorb 26 thousand tons of pollutants in the atmosphere each year, with 27% of this capacity only in indigenous territories, which represent 22% of the entire extension of the Legal Amazon.

“The preservation of the forest and indigenous and traditional territories has the capacity not only to mitigate climate change, but also to bring unequivocal benefits to health”, explains Prist, noting that in the last four years of Bolsonaro’s government there has been a dismantling of policies to protect indigenous lands.

The study also highlights that there was an increase in forest loss due to fires in the period, a situation that has been getting worse — the years 2020 to 2022, not included in the study, were records of deforestation in the region.

“The number of fires has been growing in recent years, so it is to be expected that the health effects will also be increased”, says the researcher.

For Dinaman Tuxã, from Apib, the study materializes what indigenous peoples have been warning about for some time. “We have already seen alerting and contributing to the scientific and global community about the importance of indigenous territories in the fight against global warming and climate change. When we alerted to the demarcation [de terras]this reflects much more than just the indigenous population that lives there”, he says.

Tuxã hopes that the Lula government (PT) fulfills its promise to carry out the demarcation of indigenous lands within the period of one hundred days of government, which will be completed next Monday (10).

In a note, the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples reported that it concluded the procedural instruction of 12 indigenous lands considered ready to finalize the demarcation procedure, according to the identification made by the government transition team still in 2022, and that it expects to resume the processes of demarcation during the month of April.

According to a study by Ipam (Amazon Environmental Research Institute), the demarcation of the 13 promised indigenous territories, of which five are in the Amazon, would amount to a reduction of more than 470 billion greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere, in addition to the possibility of storing tens of billions of tons of carbon.

“It is essential to preserve territories, not only for their biodiversity and cultural complexity, but to ensure the long-awaited future of sustainable development and climate resilience”, says Patrícia Pinho, from Ipam.

_{The Planeta em Transe project is supported by the Open Society Foundations.}