Indonesian forest fires led to 100,000 premature deaths says report

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Jakarta, Sept. 19, 2016 (dpa/NAN) More than 100,000 people in Southeast Asia may have died prematurely last year as a result of forest fires in Indonesia, according to a study by two U.S. universities.

Researchers from Harvard and Columbia Universities estimated that toxic smoke from the forest fires caused 91,600 “excess deaths” from July to October 2015 in Indonesia alone.

They counted 6,500 premature deaths in Malaysia and 2,200 in Singapore.

The study results, published on Monday, suggested that regional smoke-related mortality was 2.7 times higher in 2015.

The research attributed premature deaths in adults to breathing high levels of carbon-based particulates.

The study did not include the impacts of other toxins in the forest fire haze, which included carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, hydrogen cyanide and arsenic.

The Indonesian Government put the death toll from the 2015 forest fires at 24. The World Bank estimated economic losses as a result of the fires at 16 billion dollars.

The study found that much of the haze was from fires set on peatlands drained for plantations.

Peatland fires can smoulder for days or weeks underground in conditions which release three to six times more smoke particulates than fires elsewhere, experts at the environmental non-profit Greenpeace said.

Six Indonesian provinces last month declared emergency alerts after forest fires erupted in parts of Borneo and Sumatra islands.

Greenpeace has urged the government to do more to end the blazes.

“If nothing changes, this killer haze will carry on taking a terrible toll, year after year,” Greenpeace Indonesia forest campaigner Yuyun Indradi said.

“Now that we know the scale of the death toll, failure to act immediately to stem the loss of life would be a crime,” he said. (dpa/NAN)

Edited by (Isaac Aregbesola/Julius Enehikhuere)