Scientist’s fears over chemicals released by moor fires
A SCIENTIST is warning the wildfires on Saddleworth Moor may have released a poisonous cocktail of chemicals that could pose ‘significant health risks’ to residents in Greater Manchester.
Firefighters spent three weeks tackling a series of moorland fires which covered seven square miles between Oldham and Tameside, with the fires sending a huge plume of smoke across much of Greater Manchester carried on an easterly wind.
Residents who were close to the blaze were urged at the height of the fires to keep windows and doors closed by Public Health England. The moorland fire was official declared extinguished by Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service on July 18.
As new pictures show how the scorched moorland is slowly recovering, a leading academic has warned that the peat which fuelled the fire stored industrial pollution dating back 200 years.
When it burns, peat releases large amounts of smoke and particulate matter which pose ‘significant health risks to human communities’ even hundreds of miles away, according to Susan Page, a professor of physical geography and a peat expert at the University of Leicester.
She told Telegraph magazine: “My concern is whether the fires are now liberating some of those industrial pollutants back up into the atmosphere. I think wildfires are increasingly going to become a health issue.”
She added: “The peat soils contain this pollution legacy in the form of increased levels of heavy metals, which will also be liberated into the smoke by the fires.”
Research in Canada has shown harmful levels of mercury have been released during peat fires.
She went on: “Peat smoke contains many carcinogenic gases such as hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and benzene that could result in a longerterm increase in ill health and mortality in the smoke-affected population.”
No research has been done into the long-term effects of this cocktail of gases, she said.
Wildfires also reportedly give off miniscule amounts of particulate matter and research carried out by the University of Tasmania showed that an estimated 340,000 people die every year from the effects of inhaling miniscule particles.