forest fires and regional haze in south-east asia - university.docVIP

Chapter 10 AIR QUALITY DURING HAZE EPISODES AND ITS IMPACT ON HEALTH Kathryn Ostermann Atmospheric Sciences Program, The University of British Columbia, and Michael Brauer School of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, The University of British Columbia, 2206 East Mall, Vancouver BC, Canada V6T 1Z3 E-mail: brauer@interchange.ubc.ca Introduction There are only a limited number of studies directly evaluating the community health impacts of air pollution from vegetation fires, such as those that affected Southeast Asia in 1997 and 1998. In this chapter we describe the available information regarding air pollutant concentrations during “haze” episodes in Southeast Asia and use available data from the literature to discuss the potential population health impacts of the resulting exposures. Several recent review papers have discussed the health impacts and pollutants associated with wood smoke air pollution (Larson and Koenig, 1994; Pierson et al., 1989; Vedal, 1993). Although the emphasis of these reviews was on North American community exposures, many of the conclusions are relevant to the broader understanding of vegetation fire air pollution. This chapter will also discuss the health impacts of exposures to biomass air pollution encountered by forest firefighters and by individuals in developing countries who use biomass for cooking and heating as these exposures demonstrate the plausibility of health impacts associated with exposures to smoke from vegetation fires. In the context of public health impacts associated with haze we also discuss management strategies and efforts to mitigate health effects. Exposures to air pollution from vegetation fires Air pollution from vegetation fires, referred to here as biomass smoke, contains a large and diverse number of chemicals, many of which have been associated with adverse health impacts. The major chemicals present in biomass smoke and their sources are listed in Table 1. These chemicals include both particulates an