Wildfire Smoke Killed 3,560 People in Indonesia in September, Study Finds

Smoke from forest and land fires killed an estimated 3,560 people in Indonesia in September, according to a new report from the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), which Al Jazeera covered. The think tank released the study on Thursday.

The findings come as fires fueled by severe drought and an El Nino weather pattern continue to send toxic haze across the Southeast Asian archipelago and into neighboring countries.

The key numbers

• 3,560 deaths were caused by toxic smoke from forest and land fires in September, according to the report.
• 1,750 deaths were linked to chronic, non-fire emissions from urban and industrial sources, the same think tank found.
• 42% was the rise in air pollution-related deaths in September. The estimate climbed from 3,740 in August to 5,310 the following month.
• 58 million people were exposed to air rated “unhealthy” to “hazardous” in September, which CREA described as a record peak.
• 6.4 million people in Kalimantan alone breathed hazardous-level air during the worst days of the month, up from 2.8 million and nearly triple the earlier figure, the report said.

Where the smoke hit hardest

The impact was not spread evenly across the country. Fire smoke accounted for 94-99 percent of air pollution-related deaths in Kalimantan, on the island of Borneo, and for more than 80 percent on Sumatra, according to the report. Those two regions were the worst affected by the fires.

Java, the southern island, told a different story. Deaths there remained largely tied to urban and industrial pollution rather than to wildfire smoke, the study found.

Why the fires are burning

Al Jazeera reported that Indonesia has been battling devastating wildfires triggered by severe drought during an El Nino pattern. The fires have led to deforestation and covered the archipelago in toxic smog. Neighboring countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and East Timor, have also seen higher pollution levels.

The haze has already disrupted travel. Al Jazeera pointed readers to earlier coverage noting that Malaysia's Firefly canceled flights to Singapore because of smoke from Indonesia.

What the government says

The government in Jakarta is facing growing criticism over how it has handled the fires. On Wednesday, it defended its approach. Officials said they have deployed more than 72,000 people for cloud-seeding and firefighting operations, activated more than 2,100 doctors and health workers in hard-hit areas, and handed out 5.3 million masks.

What this means for people in the region

The report puts a human toll on a crisis that is often described in terms of burned land and hazy skies. For residents of Kalimantan and Sumatra, it indicates that the fires, not city traffic or factories, were the main driver of dangerous air in September. In Java, ordinary urban and industrial pollution remained the larger problem.

The figures also show how far the effects reach beyond the burning areas. Tens of millions of people were exposed to unhealthy or hazardous air, and neighboring countries felt the pollution too, along with disruptions such as canceled flights.

One caution on the numbers: the estimates come from a single think tank's report, and they are modeled estimates of deaths linked to air pollution rather than counts from death certificates. Al Jazeera's headline rounded the fire-smoke toll to 3,500, while the text of its article gives 3,560.

Around Prague, based on reporting by Al Jazeera