Health impacts of wildfire-related air pollution in Brazil: a nationwide study of more than 2 million hospital admissions between 2008 and 2018

Réquia, Weeberb J.; Amini, Heresh; Mukherjee, Rajarshi; Gold, Diane R.; Schwartz, Joel

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-26822-7

Cited by 50 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…We suggest that part of our ndings may be explained by Brazil's complex environmental and socio-demographic conditions. We must consider that Brazil has different types of biomes (Amazon Forest, Cerrado, Atlantic Forest, Caatinga, Pampa, and Pantanal) that are strongly correlated with weather 18,19 and land use 20,21 -an essential proxy of air pollution 22,23 . For example, the Caatinga biome (mostly located in the Northeast region) has become warmer and dryer in the last years 21,24 and there has been a considerable increase in agricultural activities and pasture area 20,21 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and racial disparities of the weather impact on air quality in Brazil

Réquia

Castelhano

2022

Preprint

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Several studies have quantified the air pollution exposure disparities across racial and income groups. There is still a lack of investigations assessing disparities related to the impacts of weather on air pollution, which could indicate target air pollution reduction strategies under different climate scenarios. Our study aims to address this gap by estimating the economic and racial disparities of the weather impact on air quality in Brazil between 2003 and 2018. This study was divided into two stages. First, we used a generalized additive approach to fit two models to estimate the daily concentration of PM2.5 in each municipality in Brazil. We fitted a model adjusted for weather variables and an unadjusted model (without weather variables). Both models were controlled for temporal terms. This framework derived “weather penalty” by accounting for the differences in the β values among the adjusted and unadjusted models (βunadjusted - βadjusted). A positive penalty (βunadjusted > βadjusted) suggests that an increase in PM2.5 was associated with long-term weather changes between 2003 and 2018. In the second state, we estimated the population-weighted weather penalty for two groups in Brazil - racial and income. We found that the average penalty for the white population was 8.1% higher than that of the black population in Brazil. In the stratification analysis by region, the results were the same in the North, Northeast, and Southeast regions, in which white was the most-exposed group. In contrast, the Midwest and South were the regions where the black population was the most-exposed group, with a percentage difference in the average penalty of 2.4 and 3.7% that of the white population, respectively. For the income group, our results indicate that the high-income population group (income > third quartile of the income distribution) was the most-exposed group in all analyses, including the national and the regional analyses.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economic and racial disparities of the weather impact on air quality in Brazil

Réquia

Castelhano

2022

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“…For example, fires can harm public health. It is well-documented that exposure to wildfire smoke increases the incidence of cardiovascular diseases (Requia et al, 2021). Fires that get out of control have economic costs too.…”

Section: Wildfires and Their Distributive Consequences In Brazilmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global Harms, Local Profits: How the Uneven Costs of Natural Disasters Affect Support for Green Political Platforms

Pianta¹,

Rettl²

2022

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As the climate crisis worsens, it becomes increasingly important to understand how voters respond to first-hand experience of natural disasters. Conventional wisdom holds that exposure to natural disasters fosters environmental concern, thereby increasing support for green parties and candidates. Looking at the impact of wildfires on voting behavior in Brazil, we argue instead that exposure to natural disasters increases support for green candidates only when the costs of disasters outweigh their benefits. While fires have unambiguously negative environmental and health effects, their economic implications are not necessarily negative. In areas where fires destroy natural vegetation, newly ``cleared'' land may represent an opportunity for land grabbing and the expansion of agricultural and livestock production. We source satellite, administrative, and electoral data from Brazil and use it in two different identification strategies. Our results show that exposure to fires increases support for the main green candidate only in municipalities with low shares of employment in sectors that are likely to benefit from the degradation of the natural environment. Our findings shed light on the distributional implications of environmental degradation and their political consequences.

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“…Shifts in wildfire patterns can come with increasingly negative human and ecological impacts. Globally, dangerous smoke levels are more common as a result of wildfires (9,10,18,19). The 2019 to 2020 Australian wildfire season produced fires that were larger, more intense, and more numerous than in the historical record (20), injecting the largest amount of smoke into the stratosphere observed in the satellite era (21,22) and impacting water supplies for millions of residents (23).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As wildfire danger increases, we are only beginning to understand longer-term postfire impacts. These include regeneration failure of vegetation (38,39), changes to biodiversity through interactions with climate change, land use and biotic invasions (27), landslides and debris flows (40), contaminated water and soil (23,41), and exposure to hazardous air quality for days to weeks in regions that can extend thousands of kilometers from smoke sources (9,10,19,42). Increasing wildfire activity and associated negative impacts are expected to continue over the 21st century, as greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise (7,43,44).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene

et al. 2022

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Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem services. Increasing fire danger is a vexing problem that requires deep transdisciplinary, trans-sector, and inclusive partnerships to address. Here, we outline barriers and opportunities in the next generation of fire science and provide guidance for investment in future research. We synthesize insights needed to better address the long-standing challenges of innovation across disciplines to (i) promote coordinated research efforts; (ii) embrace different ways of knowing and knowledge generation; (iii) promote exploration of fundamental science; (iv) capitalize on the “firehose” of data for societal benefit; and (v) integrate human and natural systems into models across multiple scales. Fire science is thus at a critical transitional moment. We need to shift from observation and modeled representations of varying components of climate, people, vegetation, and fire to more integrative and predictive approaches that support pathways towards mitigating and adapting to our increasingly flammable world, including the utilization of fire for human safety and benefit. Only through overcoming institutional silos and accessing knowledge across diverse communities can we effectively undertake research that improves outcomes in our more fiery future.

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Health impacts of wildfire-related air pollution in Brazil: a nationwide study of more than 2 million hospital admissions between 2008 and 2018

Cited by 50 publications

References 36 publications

Economic and racial disparities of the weather impact on air quality in Brazil

Economic and racial disparities of the weather impact on air quality in Brazil

Global Harms, Local Profits: How the Uneven Costs of Natural Disasters Affect Support for Green Political Platforms

Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene

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