Version 1
: Received: 17 July 2024 / Approved: 17 July 2024 / Online: 17 July 2024 (11:36:28 CEST)
How to cite:
Nguyen, H. D.; Ho, B. Q.; Nguyen, Q. H.; Ngo, Q. X.; Tran, D. A. Effect of Biomass Burnings on Population Exposure and Health Impact at the End of 2019 Dry Season in Southeast Asia. Preprints2024, 2024071425. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1425.v1
Nguyen, H. D.; Ho, B. Q.; Nguyen, Q. H.; Ngo, Q. X.; Tran, D. A. Effect of Biomass Burnings on Population Exposure and Health Impact at the End of 2019 Dry Season in Southeast Asia. Preprints 2024, 2024071425. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1425.v1
Nguyen, H. D.; Ho, B. Q.; Nguyen, Q. H.; Ngo, Q. X.; Tran, D. A. Effect of Biomass Burnings on Population Exposure and Health Impact at the End of 2019 Dry Season in Southeast Asia. Preprints2024, 2024071425. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1425.v1
APA Style
Nguyen, H. D., Ho, B. Q., Nguyen, Q. H., Ngo, Q. X., & Tran, D. A. (2024). Effect of Biomass Burnings on Population Exposure and Health Impact at the End of 2019 Dry Season in Southeast Asia. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1425.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Nguyen, H. D., Quang Xuan Ngo and Duong Anh Tran. 2024 "Effect of Biomass Burnings on Population Exposure and Health Impact at the End of 2019 Dry Season in Southeast Asia" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202407.1425.v1
Abstract
At the end of the dry season in early March to early April each year, extensive agricultural biomass waste burnings occur throughout insular mainland Southeast Asia. During this biomass burnings period, smoke aerosols blanket the whole regions and were transported and dispersed by predominant westerly and south westerly winds to southern China, Taiwan and as far southern Japan and the Philippines. The extensive and intense burnings coincided with some wildfires in the forests due to high temperature making the region one of the global hot spots of biomass fires.
In this study, we focus on the effect of pollutants emitted from biomass burnings in March 2019 at the height of the burnings period to the exposed population and their health impact. The Weather Research Forecast- Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model was used to predict the PM2.5 concentration over the simulating domain and health impacts are then assessed on the exposed population in the four countries of Southeast Asia, namely Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Using the health impact based on log-linear concentration response function and Integrated Exposure Response (IER), the results show that at the peak period of the burnings from 13 to 20 March 2019, Thailand experienced the highest impact, with an estimated 2170 premature deaths. Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia followed, with estimated mortalities of 277, 565, and 314 deaths respectively. However, when considering the impact per head of population, Laos exhibited the highest impact, followed by Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The results highlight the significant health impact and associated economic cost of agricultural waste burnings in Southeast Asia at the end of the dry season. And hence policy makers should take these into account to design measures to reduce the negative impact of widespread burnings on exposed population in the region.
Keywords
Southeast Asia; biomass burnings; dry season 2019; health impact; PM2.5 pollutants
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Environmental Science
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
