Although emissions from peat fires may differ from those from forest fires in chemical composition, it is not known if they differ in toxicity.
Even if emissions from drained organic soils and non-CO2 emissions from forest fires may be relevant in some countries (e.g., [28, 29]), at the EU level they account for 5 and 2 % (in terms of CO2-eq)., respectively, of net annual forest sink [13].
A recent study calculated the pollution from the fires may have led to 100,000 early deaths.
The cloud, a mixture of domestic and industrial emissions and smoke from forest fires, may alter the local climate and damage ocean productivity by killing plankton.Emergency measuresAfter a mortar attack on Bogota by FARC guerrillas that killed 20 people, Colombia's new president, Alvaro Uribe, declared a limited state of emergency.
Breathing the smoke from traditional cook stoves and open fires may have caused 1.96 million premature deaths worldwide in 2004, according to WHO risk factor estimates accompanying the 2008 report The Global Burden of Disease: 2004 Update.
Apart from high consumption of fuel (Sobsey 2002), in-house boiling on the traditional fires may promote respiratory diseases.
Outdoor fires may be illegal.
Flame impingement from localized fire may lead to high temperatures in the exposed steel members, which may lead to structural failure.
As a result, forest degradation from logging and fire may have been included in historic deforestation estimates, especially in years with extensive damages from understory forest fires [48].
The separation of the initial burst from the later firing may be interesting since the burst and the later firing are thought to play different roles.
