Smoke from forest fires suffocates inhabitants of the Brazilian Amazon

ManausSmoke from forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon caused residents in the region to suffer from coughing, sore throats and red eyes on Wednesday.

Large sections of the country have been covered in smoke in recent days following fires in various parts of the Amazon, the Cerrado savannah, the Pantanal wetlands and the state of Sao Paulo.

Residents are paying the price, as is the case of Fatima Silva, a 60-year-old farmer from the Amazonian town of Labrea.

“I don’t feel well. I have trouble breathing, my throat hurts, I need eye drops, I can’t go outside, I can’t go anywhere because everything is white with smoke,” Silva told The Associated Press in a voice message. She added that her grandchildren are coughing so much they can barely sleep.

“My grandchildren, my children, they are all getting sick. Today the situation has worsened. No one can stand it anymore,” she said.

Fire has traditionally been used in the country for deforestation and grazing land management, and these deliberate conflagrations are largely responsible for the large forest fires.

There have been 53,620 fire outbreaks in the Amazon so far this year, an 83 percent increase over the same period last year, according to the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency.

Many areas of the Amazon were experiencing “very bad” or “terrible” air quality, according to the environmental monitoring system of the State University of Amazonas.

In the event of forest fires and the resulting smoke, the civil protection authority of the state of Amazonas recommended that the population stay hydrated and avoid going outdoors.

But street vendors, garbage collectors, police officers and other workers don’t have that option. And that means they can’t avoid inhaling smoke. Worse, because they have to work harder to breathe in such conditions, they end up inhaling more of the dangerous particles into their lungs, said Jesem Orellana, a Manaus resident, epidemiologist and researcher at the Fiocruz Institute.

Residents of Manaus, the largest city in the Amazon, have grown accustomed to the “smoke of death” during the months of September and October, when wildfires and deforestation typically approach their peak. But this year the smoke became a problem much sooner than expected, he said.

“This means that we are exposed to this toxic smoke for even longer periods, which has direct consequences on the health of the population,” Orellana said in a telephone interview with AP. And the impact of smoke goes far beyond health, he said, causing anxiety that can have repercussions on the quality of sleep.

Maria Soledade Barros Silva, who lives in the Ponta Negra neighborhood of Manaus, said the riverbank where people usually go to ride bikes, skate or jet ski is clouded with a thick layer of smoke. Navigation, on which many residents depend, has also become much more difficult.

“It’s not normal. I’ve lived here for 40 years. This never happened before,” Barros lamented. Silva, who lives upriver along the Purús River in Labrea, also said he had never seen anything like this before.

“I think this is the worst place in the world. We are asking for help because we can no longer continue living like this,” he stressed.