Reduction in Amazon deforestation avoids 1,700 deaths per year

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-10/fda-ria102615.php

Public Release: 26-Oct-2015
Reduction in Amazon deforestation avoids 1,700 deaths per year
Study shows a decrease in dry-season particulate matter produced from Amazon forest fires over southwestern Brazil and Bolivia in the period 2002-11, especially in years with lower deforestation rates

Because of decreasing deforestation and emissions from forest fires in the Amazon over the past ten years, the amount of particulate matter (aerosols), ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and other atmospheric pollutants released by burning biomass has fallen by 30% on average during the dry season in southern Brazil, Paraguay, northern Bolivia and Argentina.

This improvement in the region's air quality may be helping to prevent the premature deaths of some 1,700 adults per year throughout South America.

These estimates come from a study performed by researchers at the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Leeds and Manchester in England and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

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