Officials dismiss study saying haze killed 100,000
JAKARTA, Indonesia — Indonesian, Malaysian and Singaporean authorities have dismissed research that smoky haze from catastrophic forest fires in Indonesia last year caused 100,000 deaths. Some even contend the haze caused no serious health problems, but experts say those assertions contradict well-established science.
Last year’s fires in Sumatra and the Indonesian part of Borneo were the worst since 1997, burning about 645,000 acres of forests and peatland and sending haze across the region for weeks. Many were deliberately set by companies to clear land for palm oil and pulpwood plantations.
The study in the journal Environmental Research Letters by Harvard and Columbia researchers estimated the amount of health-threatening fine particles, often referred to as PM2.5, released by the fires that burned from July to October and tracked their spread across Southeast Asia using satellite observations.
In Indonesia, a spokesman for the country’s disaster mitigation agency said the research “could be baseless or they have the wrong information.” Indonesia officially counted 24 deaths from the haze including people killed fighting the fires.
Singapore’s Ministry of Health said short-term exposure to haze will generally not cause serious health problems. The study was “not reflective of the actual situation,” it said, and the overall death rate hadn’t changed last year. In Malaysia, Health Minister Subramaniam Sathasivam said officials are still studying the research, which is “computer generated, not based on hard data.”
The dry season fires are an annual irritant in Indonesia’s relations with its neighbors Singapore and Malaysia and the finding of a huge public health burden has the potential to worsen those strains. The 2015 burning season, which was worsened by El Niño’s dry conditions, also tainted Indonesia’s reputation globally by releasing a vast amount of atmosphere-warming carbon.
The Indonesian government has stepped up efforts to prosecute companies and individuals who set fires and also strengthened its fire-fighting response. This year’s fires have affected a smaller area in large part due to unseasonal rains.
Jamal Hisham Hashim, research fellow with the International Institute for Global Health in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, said governments should not dismiss the study even if the estimated deaths are arguable.
He said decades of air pollution research that followed London’s killer smog in 1952 has established the relationship between fine particulate matter and premature deaths, particularly in people with existing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
“The pollution level that occurred during the haze is severe enough to cause premature deaths. That is indisputable,” he said. “The study is a wake-up call.”