Rampant Amazon fires are poisoning the air. Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro calls the crisis 'a lie'

A new study has found more than 2,000 people suffered respiratory distress after inhaling the smoke-polluted air belched out by fires in the Amazon.

Wildfires consume an area near Labrea in Brazil's Amazonas State earlier this month. Source: AP

Rampant fires in the Amazon are "poisoning the air" of the world's biggest rainforest, causing a sharp rise in respiratory emergencies in a region already hit hard by COVID-19, a new study has found.

The fires that engulfed the Brazilian Amazon last year amid a global outcry caused an estimated 2,195 people in the region to be hospitalised for respiratory distress driven by inhaling smoke-polluted air, according to the study. 

The study, conducted by Human Rights Watch in collaboration with Brazilian researchers, included 467 babies and 1,080 people aged over 60. 

With recent data showing alarming levels of fires and deforestation, the problem could be even worse in 2020, the authors said.

"Fires resulting from unchecked deforestation are poisoning the air millions of people breathe, affecting health throughout the Brazilian Amazon," they said in a statement.

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro said it was a lie that the Amazon was being devastated by fire. Source: AAP

The fires are mainly caused by people clearing land for farming and ranching, then illegally burning the trees.

The study used a statistical analysis of data on hospitalisations for respiratory emergencies to estimate how much of the increase observed in 2019 was attributable to the fires.

The authors warned the problem would be exacerbated in 2020 by the coronavirus pandemic, which has hit the Brazilian Amazon region hard and could combine with the fire season, which typically peaks from August to October.

The authors also warned of the impact of air pollution on Indigenous communities in the Amazon, a population particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

That warning echoed the results of another study published recently by Brazil's Socio-Environmental Institute, which found a sharp rise in hospitalisations of Indigenous people during fire season.

The latest study's authors criticised Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's policies on the Amazon, 60 percent of which is in Brazil.

"The Bolsonaro administration’s persistent failure to tackle this environmental crisis has immediate consequences for the health of Amazon residents and long-term consequences for global climate change," said Human Rights Watch's Brazil director, Maria Laura Canineu.

The far-right leader recently called the surge in Amazon fires "a lie".

But figures from his own government show the number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon rose 28 percent last month from July 2019, to 6,803.