Hospitalization Due to Fire-Induced Pollution in the Brazilian Legal Amazon from 2005 to 2018

Abstract

Fire is widely used in the Amazon as a ubiquitous driver of land management and land cover change. Regardless of their purpose, fires release a considerable amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, with severe consequences for human health. This paper adds to the extant literature by measuring the causal effect of fires on hospitalizations, using the approach of instrumental variables, whose validity is assessed with multiple statistical tests. A wide range of confounders are added as covariates, seizing on the accuracy enhancement potential of a broad and fine-grained dataset that covers 14 years of the whole Amazon territory at a municipal–monthly level. The results reveal a positive effect of fire on hospitalizations due to respiratory illnesses in general, and particularly in those due to asthma. A 1% increase in pollution concentration would increase hospitalizations by 0.14% at a municipality–monthly level. A total of 5% of respiratory hospitalizations were estimated to be attributable to fire-induced pollution, corresponding to 822 cases per month. The analysis demonstrates that the coupling of econometrics and remote sensing data is a promising avenue towards the assessment of impacts caused by fires, which may be applied to other regions of the world subjected to anthropogenic fires.