Smoke from Australian bushfires linked to hundreds of deaths

Smoke from Australia’s deadly recent bushfires is linked to an estimated 445 deaths and more than 4,000 hospital admissions over several months, a government inquiry heard yesterday.

More than 30 people died as a direct cause of the blazes and thousands of homes were destroyed late last year and early this year, leaving affected communities devastated.

The Royal Commission — tasked with finding ways to improve how Australia deals with natural disasters — heard from an environmental health specialist that the overall toll was estimated to be far higher when accounting for the effect from the bushfire smoke.

Fay Johnston, associate professor at the University of Tasmania’s Menzies Institute for Medical Research, said its modelling found there were 445 deaths attributable to the fires as well as 3,340 hospital admissions and 1,373 emergency room visits.

“Our estimates for the last season were at A$2bn (R22.6bn) in health costs associated with premature loss of life and admissions to hospitals,” she said.

Johnston said that was about 10 times higher than in preceding years, despite not including costs associated with ambulance call-outs, lost productivity or some diseases where the effect would be difficult to model, such as diabetes.

“There’s fluctuation year to year, of course, but that was a major departure from anything we had seen in the previous 20 years,” she said.

Johnston said 80% of Australians — or about 20-million people — were affected by smoke from the vast blazes, which burnt more than 10million hectares of land.

Sydney was blanketed by a grey toxic haze for weeks as mega-blazes ringed Australia’s biggest city, while other major centres, including the capital, Canberra, were also shrouded by hazardous smoke.

Bushfire-prone Australia has seen dozens of inquests into the causes of bushfires and steps that could be taken to mitigate them.