Respiratory Illness Increases due to Forest Fires
10/19/97
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Headline: Respiratory Illness Increases due to Forest Fires
Source: Environment News Service and Claire Gilbert
Date: 10/19/97
Author: Claire Gilbert, Ph.D.
Copyright 1997 Environment News Service and Claire Gilbert, Ph.D.
SICK OF BRAZIL'S FOREST FIRES
HALF MOON BAY, California, October 17, 1997 (ENS)- Brazil has had
a mild winter this year. But, examination of hospital records and
interviews with doctors in Brazil indicate that respiratory illness
has increased, as well as infectious diseases and rickets in
children.
"I've never seen it so bad," said Steve Schwartzman, a scientist
with the Washington-based Environmental Defense Fund who has worked
in the region for 15 years. "I got sick myself. I got a respiratory
infection."
Half of the land mass of Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia is covered
with smoke from the fires.
Satellites show that the Amazon, the world's largest rainforest, is
burning at rate that alarms many observers. Yet, even satellites do
not show all of the ground burning. "For every hectare that we know
about that's cleared and burned and is easy to map with high
resolution satellites, an equal area is being impoverished beneath
the canopy," Woods Hole scientist Daniel Neptad said from the
Amazon, where he is conducting research.
A current research project supervised by Forrest Mims, III, shows
in increase in respiratory deaths by month during the burning
season in Brazil, in July, August, and September. Mims is the one
of few in all of Brazil who has been taking ground measurements of
ultra violet radiation during the burning season. Brazil has one
official monitoring ozone station, in Cuiba.
This year the amount of burning and smoke in Brazil is the possibly
the greatest it has ever been. There is more smoke coming off the
Brazil fires than the current Indonesian fires, but in Brazil, the
land area is much greater and the burning is spread out more.
Brazil is the size of continental United States, while Indonesia is
a string of more than 13,000 islands.
The Brazilian forests are particularly dry this year. Oliveira is
an acting superintendent with Brazil's Environmental Protection
Agency in Manaus, 1,760 miles northwest of Rio. He told CNN by
telephone "To have an idea of how bad it is, a farmer was trying to
burn off 12 acres and he ended up burning off 500 acres. It's just
that dry."
Brazil's normal humidity is near 95 percent, but the worst El Nino
Pacific Ocean warming system since the 1950s is cutting humidity
levels over South America to their lowest since 1939.
Several types of burning go on in Brazil. Some are relatively
innocuous - some are not.
Among the most harmful is the drag and burn of the virgin
rainforest. Two bulldozers with a chain in between are driven
through the forest to knock down trees. The tropical trees are
shallow rooted. The fallen trees are allowed to dry out for a
period of months, and then they are torched.
The burning of secondary growth also causes great damage. When the
rainforest that has been destroyed tries to grow back, it is burned
again. No attempt is made to put out any of the fires, because they
are on private property and no cities are threatened.
Among the more innocuous burnings are clearing brush or "cerrado"
and Pantanal Region burning of swampy area during the dry season.
Intermediate is the slash and burn of agricultural land in or near
the Amazon. This puts out little smoke as only a few acres are
involved at a time.
Of the 12% to 13% of the forested area of the Amazon cleared and
burned to date - an area about the size of California - only about
12% is farmed. The rest is cattle pasture, and most new forest
clearing is for the creation of cattle pasture. New areas are
typically first made accessible to ranching and agriculture by
building of logging roads, particularly for mahogany extraction.
In Alta Floresta, near the equator, about half the people have
respiratory disease from the smoke during the burning season.
Doctors report that off season they see about 2 or 3 patients
weekly with breathing problems. During the burning season this
number jumps to 8 patients per day, Mims says.
"In Manaus, which is one of the two largest cities in the Amazon,
we have recorded a large cloud of smoke hovering over the city.
Health officials have told us that they have an increase of 40
percent in respiratory disease," said Garo Batmanian, the World
Wildlife Fund's executive director for Brazil.
We usually think of UV radiation as "bad." But when striking human
skin, it enables the body to make vitamin D. With the heavy smoke,
there are places where no ultra violet radiation reaches the
surface of the earth. Vitamin D is not added to milk in Brazil, and
some children are developing rickets. Mims says you can look at the
sun without sunglasses right in the middle of the afternoon.
Now, half of the land mass of Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia are
covered with smoke from the fires. UV radiation kills airborne and
surface bacteria and viruses, and the lack of UV is probably
contributing to the increase of infectious disease observed in
Brazil.