Smoke from this year's fires is linked to more than 5,200 deaths

Nikkei Asia reports that a study released on Thursday by the research group CREA puts a number on this year's burning season: at least 5,200 people in Indonesia died in August and September because of long exposure to smoke from forest and peatland fires. The people most affected lived in Borneo and Sumatra, and CREA found the highest risk of death in Central Kalimantan.

A figure like this is not a list of named victims. Researchers compare how dirty the air was with how many people normally die in that area, then estimate how many more died than would have in a clean-air year. Most of those deaths are people whose heart or lung illness was already there, and whom the smoke pushed over the edge. That is why the toll stays invisible for months: nobody writes "haze" on a death certificate, and the counting comes later.

The air itself explains the mechanism. A photo in the same report, taken in Palangkaraya on 24 October, comes with a line saying the fine particles residents were breathing measured more than 20 times the World Health Organization's limit. Those particles, known as PM2.5, are small enough to travel deep into the lungs and pass into the blood, which is why they hurt hearts as well as airways. CREA's count stops at the end of September, and the air in Palangkaraya was still that bad in late October.

Why it matters

If you live in Kalimantan or Sumatra and have asthma, a heart condition, a small child or an elderly parent at home, this study is the hard evidence that the smoke does more than sting your eyes. The practical read is to treat the official air-quality number the way you treat a flood warning, and to ask what clinics near you are being given to handle it. No October figure exists yet, and that late-October reading gives no reason to expect a gentler month.