Abstract
We quantified the impacts of wildfire-related PM2.5 on 2 million hospital admissions records due to cardiorespiratory diseases in Brazil between 2008 and 2018. The national analysis shows that wildfire waves are associated with an increase of 23% (95%CI: 12%–33%) in respiratory hospital admissions and an increase of 21% (95%CI: 8%–35%) in circulatory hospital admissions. In the North (where most of the Amazon region is located), we estimate an increase of 38% (95%CI: 30%–47%) in respiratory hospital admissions and 27% (95%CI: 15%–39%) in circulatory hospital admissions. Here we report epidemiological evidence that air pollution emitted by wildfires is significantly associated with a higher risk of cardiorespiratory hospital admissions.
Highlights
We quantified the impacts of wildfire-related PM2.5 on 2 million hospital admissions records due to cardiorespiratory diseases in Brazil between 2008 and 2018
This is consistent with results from previous Brazilian investigations, studies from other countries, and studies of PM2.5 in general
In Brazil, Ignotti et al.[21] estimated the impact on respiratory hospital admissions due to PM2.5 emitted from burnings in the Amazon region and reported an increase of 8% in child hospitalization and 10% in the hospitalization of the elderly
Summary
We quantified the impacts of wildfire-related PM2.5 on 2 million hospital admissions records due to cardiorespiratory diseases in Brazil between 2008 and 2018. We report epidemiological evidence that air pollution emitted by wildfires is significantly associated with a higher risk of cardiorespiratory hospital admissions. In the United States, Koplitz et al.[5] estimate 90,000 km[2] of burned area per year. Regarding the health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure, a critical review of 53 epidemiological studies[10] shows that wildfire exposure is associated with respiratory diseases and growing evidence suggests associations for specific cardiovascular endpoints. Liu et al.[11] estimated a 7.2% increase in risk for respiratory admissions during smoke wave days with high wildfire-specific PM2.5 during 2004 and 2009 in the Western United States. In Brazil, the reduction of wildfire-related particulate emissions by 30% indicates a health improvement by preventing about 400 to 1700 premature adult deaths annually[8]. Given that Brazil is very fire-prone region and (i) where there are different types of biomass
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