The study estimates that most of the 339,000 deaths each year
between 1997 and 2006 came from these two regions. Fay Johnston,
a researcher at the University of Tasmania, Australia who led
the study, said she was surprised the figures were so high given
the intermittent nature of smoke exposure. She was speaking at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual
meeting in Vancouver, Canada last week (18 February), the same
day as her study was published in Environmental Health
Perspectives. Using data on fire emissions, mortality rates,
population density and weather conditions, the team assessed how
small particles in wildfire smoke affect health. They included
fires from agricultural burning, grass fire, peat fire, and
tropical deforestation, using a variety of data from global
datasets and satellites. "We have known for a long time that
fires release gases and particulate matter with adverse effects
on health, but nobody has been able to quantify this for
landscape fires until now," said