Wildfire smoke will kill nearly 1.4m each year by end of century if emissions not curbed – study | US wildfires

Smoke escaping from forest fires will lead to an increasing number of deaths in the world in the decades to come while the planet continues to warm up, according to new research.

According to a study published Thursday, should kill up to 1.4 million people worldwide at the end of the century if heating shows

Separate research, published on the same day, find a similar peak in the deaths of forest smoke just in the United States, with more than 70,000 people who should die in America in this way by 2050 at the current rate of warming, against the 40,000 people who die in this way each year.

It is believed that the breathing of smoke from burning forests is approximately 10 times more toxic than inhaling another air pollution released by the fire of fossil fuel, scientists recently warning that the impact of this pollution has been seriously underestimated in terms of impact on our health.

Forest fire smoke contains ashes and soot that contain tiny particles, called PM2.5, which can, when they can be inhaled, deeply tread in people’s lungs and cause a range of respiratory and cardiac problems.

The scope of this threat is also important – recent research has estimated that 22,000 people in Europe have been killed due to plumes of forest smoke from large forest fires in Canada in 2023, as well as many other deaths in North America.

Fire has long been a characteristic of landscapes and a variety of factors, such as forest management, can influence conflagratations. The quantity of area in the world affected by forest fires has in fact decreased in the past two decades, mainly due to the evolution of agricultural practices, but, above all, the quantity of people exposed to fires developed considerably at that time.

The climate crisis is the engine of the trend of larger and more ferocious fires, according to Minghao Qiu, atmospheric researcher at Stony Brook University. “More warming and higher fuel aridity means that vegetation becomes drier, so higher forest risks,” he said.

Qiu has led research focused on the United States, published in Nature, which revealed that a little more than 71,000 people should die each year in the country by 2050 due to forest smoke on current warming trends.

California, scene of many huge fires, including the current flames that threaten the legendary redwood for the state, will bear the weight of these deaths, but smoke will also have a major number in states such as New York and Texas, revealed research.

If the emissions are not reduced, the United States may undergo annual economic damage of $ 608 billion by 2050 due to forest smoke, more than all other combined climatic dangers, the authors said.

“Forest fire smoke is by far the most important in terms of global health damages and it is a new discovery,” said Marshall Burke, environment scientist at Stanford and study co-author. “The figures are really striking.”

Forest fires are also a growing global problem, with huge flames observed in countries such as Canada, Spain and Portugal this year. A large part of the damage to smoke should be imposed on Africa, however, according to another new study, also published in Nature, by an international team of scientists.

Research estimates that 1.4 million people around the world will die by the end of the century due to the smoke of forest fires, about six times more than the current assessment, but that this burden will fall unevenly. While the United States and Europe could undergo a doubling in the deaths of forest smoke, Africa should be the most affected, with 11 times more deaths linked to the fire compared to current standards.

The risk of long -term forest smoke will be decreased if the world finally manages to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the number of deaths for the coming decades will be more influenced by short -term adaptation, said Burke.

“If we want to reduce the impacts over the next 30 years, attenuation is important, but it is in fact not the key lever,” he said.

“The two key levers reduce an extreme forest activity through other approaches, therefore food management and secondly, assuring us that we are well protected when smoke events occur. Right now, we are not very well protected. ”