The findings come during fire season in the Amazon region, when seasonal blazes are driven by drought, the climate crisis and agricultural expansion, with large ranches and farms using fire to clear land. The Amazon region has experienced record forest loss in recent years, with fires a crucial driver.

Exposure to smoke from wildfires is known to be harmful to human health and may be linked to conditions from cardiovascular disease to cancer. Scientists estimate they cause thousands of premature deaths from lung cancer and cardiopulmonary disease.

.

“When the forests burn, a big part of our lives burn too,” says Isabel Surubí Pesoa, who was displaced from her home in an Indigenous territory in Bolivia’s eastern lowlands as a result of fire and drought. “The forest is our home, it is where we get medicines, where we plant crops, where we get clean oxygen to breathe,” she says. “When the forest burns, the sicknesses come.”