Air Pollution From Wildfires Puts 10 Million Children at Risk, UN Says
Air Pollution From Wildfires Puts 10 Million Children at Risk, UN Says
(Bloomberg) -- Almost 10 million Indonesian children are exposed to air pollution triggered by wildfires raging across the country’s central and western parts, the United Nations Children’s Fund said.
Small children are more vulnerable to the unhealthy air as they breathe more rapidly and their physical defenses and immune systems aren’t fully developed, Unicef said in a statement on Tuesday. An estimated 2.4 million children under 5 years old live in areas most affected by the haze and wild fires, the agency said, adding lifelong physical and cognitive damage threaten them as they continue to breathe toxic air.
A thick layer of ash and smoke has blanketed parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore in the past few weeks, disrupting air traffic, prompting closure of schools and a spike in the number of people reporting acute respiratory illness in the region. The haze also threatens unborn babies with reduced growth, low birth weight and premature delivery, Unicef said.
Here’s the latest across the region:
Indonesia hotspots
Hotspots in Indonesia fell to 3,150 on Monday from 4,119 on Sunday, with Kalimantan still accounting for most hotspots with 1,509 fires, followed by Sumatra with 495, according to the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
Authorities said “weather modification” has resulted in rain in Riau, Jambi, South Sumatra, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan and South Kalimantan provinces on Monday. Smoke in Kalimantan is not as thick as before, while haze in Sumatra has reduced at several locations, the agency said.
Man-made fires
The country has seen as many as 328,724 hectares of forest and land burned throughout this year. Almost all cases, 99%, were man-made and 80% of the burned areas turned into plantations, according to Doni Monardo, head of the mitigation agency. Plantation companies responsible for large-scale burning of land under their license between 2015 and 2018 didn’t face any serious penalties, Greenpeace Indonesia said on Tuesday.
However, Indonesia’s Environment and Forestry Ministry said the government has named five companies as suspects behind this year’s fires and sealed 52 burned areas to prevent them from being turned into plantations.
Rains, Red Sky
Indonesia’s Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysics Agency has predicted heavy rainfall until the end of this month in several provinces, including those affected by the fires.
Fires turned the sky over Jambi red over the weekend, in a phenomenon known as Mie scattering during which air particles scatter and absorb sun rays, the Tempo reported. Jambi, one of the worst affected region by the hotspots received some welcome rain on Tuesday morning, the weather bureau said.
To contact the reporters on this story: Tassia Sipahutar in Jakarta at ssipahutar@bloomberg.net;Eko Listiyorini in Jakarta at elistiyorini@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Thomas Kutty Abraham at tabraham4@bloomberg.net, Yudith Ho
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