JAKARTA (The Thursday Times) — Toxic smoke from forest and land fires killed an estimated 3,560 people in Indonesia in September, a new study has found, as drought-driven blazes blanketed large parts of the archipelago and its neighbours in haze.
The Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said deaths linked to air pollution rose 42 per cent in September to an estimated 5,310, up from about 3,740 in August. Fire smoke accounted for 3,560 of them, while chronic emissions from urban and industrial sources caused another 1,750.
Kalimantan, on Borneo, and Sumatra were the worst hit. Fire smoke caused between 94 and 99 per cent of air pollution deaths in Kalimantan and more than 80 per cent in Sumatra, while deaths on Java remained mostly linked to urban and industrial pollution, the report said.
A record 58 million people were exposed to air rated “unhealthy” to “hazardous” in September, according to CREA. In Kalimantan alone, the number of people breathing hazardous air nearly tripled from 2.8 million to 6.4 million on the worst days of the month.
Indonesia has been battling fires fuelled by severe drought under an El Niño weather pattern, and the smoke has raised pollution levels in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and East Timor. The government, facing growing criticism over its response, said on Wednesday that it had deployed more than 72,000 people for cloud-seeding and firefighting, mobilised more than 2,100 doctors and health workers and handed out 5.3 million masks.
