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Media release
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RESULTS FROM WORLD FIRST STUDY OF TWO DECADES OF GLOBAL FIRE POLLUTION
· each person in the world is exposed to, on average, 9.9 days of exposure to health impacting landscape fire air pollution per year.
· over 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of this potentially health-impacting environmental hazard annually
· this is an increase of 6.8 per cent in the last ten years
· concentrations of fire-sourced PM2.5 and ozone are four times higher in low income countries vs high income
· Central Africa have the highest levels of fire-sourced PM 2.5, followed by Southeast Asia, South America and North Asia (Siberia)
· there are regional hotspots of high levels of fire relate PM2.5 pollution including north-western Australia, and western United States and Canada
· there is increasing fire related pollution trends in central and northern Africa, North America, Southeast Asia, Amazon areas in South America, Siberia and northern India
· there are decreasing trends in fire related pollution in southern parts of Africa and South America, northwest China and Japan.
RESULTS FROM WORLD FIRST STUDY OF TWO DECADES OF GLOBAL FIRE POLLUTION
The world’s first study of the increase in pollution from landscape fires across the globe over the past two decades reveals that over 2 billion people are exposed to at least one day of potentially health-impacting environmental hazard annually – a figure that has increased by 6.8 per cent in the last ten years.
The study highlights the severity and scale of the landscape fire-sourced air pollution, its increased impact on the world’s population and associated rise in public health risk. Exposure to fire-sourced air pollution has many adverse health impacts, including increased mortality and morbidity and a global worsening of cardiorespiratory conditions and mental health.
The study, published today (20 September, London and NYC; 21 September, Australia) in Nature led by Australian scientists, estimated the global daily air pollution from all fires from 2000 to 2019 – finding that 2.18 billion people were exposed to at least one day of substantial landscape fire air pollution in each year, with each person in the world having on average 9.9 days of exposure per year, an increase of 2.1 per cent in the last decade. It also found that exposure levels in low-income countries were about four-fold higher than in high income countries.
Led by Professors Yuming Guo and Shanshan Li, from Monash University’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, the study also found that the exposure levels of fire-sourced PM2.5 were particularly high in Central Africa, Southeast Asia, South America and Siberia. The study also looked at global landscape fire-sourced ozone, an important fire-related pollutant has only been previously estimated for United States.
In the study, landscape fires refer to any fires burning in natural and cultural landscapes, e.g. natural and planted forest, shrub, grass, pastures, agricultural lands and peri-urban areas. The landscape fires are dominated by wildfires (defined as uncontrolled or unplanned fires burning in wildland vegetation) according to the contributions to PM2.5 emission shown in the study, but they also include human planned or controlled fires (e.g., prescribed burns, agricultural fires).
The comprehensive assessment of the global population exposures to fire-sourced PM2.5 and ozone during 2000-2019 was calculated using a machine learning approach with inputs from chemical transport models, ground-based monitoring stations, and gridded weather data.
The recent pollution from the Canadian wildfires that spread smoke across North America highlighted the increase in severity and frequency of landscape fires due to climate change. According to Professor Guo, no study to date has looked at the impacts of landscape fires on air quality for such a long period at the global scale. Wildfires often impact remote areas where there are few or no air quality monitoring stations. In addition, in many low-income countries, there are no air quality monitoring stations even in urban areas. This study addressed this significant data gap regarding the air quality impacts of the landscape fires.
“The exposure to air pollution caused by landscape fire smoke travelling hundreds and sometimes even thousands of kilometres can affect much larger populations, and cause much larger public health risks,” he said.
“Mapping and tracking the population exposure to landscape fire-sourced air pollution are essential for monitoring and managing its health impacts, implementing targeted prevention and interventions, and strengthening arguments for mitigation of climate change.”
