Populations living around Amazon areas where forests are cleared with fires to grow crops in soils fertilised by the ashes might have an increased risk of DNA damage, mutation and cancer because of the air pollution.
Populations living around Amazon areas where forests are cleared with fires to grow crops in soils fertilised by the ashes might have an increased risk of DNA damage, mutation and cancer because of the air pollution.
This was the conclusion drawn by a team of Brazilian researchers who carried out controlled fire experiments to estimate the emissions of greenhouse gases and particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 microns (PM2.5) produced during burnings in rural areas around cities in Western Amazonia.
According to the Paris Agreement on climate change, Brazil should achieve zero illegal deforestation in the Amazon, as well as restore and reforest 12 million hectares, by 2030. However, in 2016, the Brazilian emissions exceeded the government’s goals by 32 per cent and the rate of deforestation in June of this year in the region reached almost 920 square kilometres.
Read more at SciDev.Net
Photo Credit: skeeze via Pixabay
