Hi everyone! It's been a while since I have released a Public Health related post, so I've prepared a short post to discuss with you the key benefits and risks of Hazard Reduction Burning, also known as Bushfire Back-burning or Safety Burning. This topic is within the "Environmental Health" area of Public Health, as it focuses on the environmental impacts on human, wildlife and ecological biodiversity health.
Some key benefits of hazard burning are:
- long term reduction in loss of life caused by bushfires,
- reduced intensity of bushfires,
- reduced fear and uncertainty of residents, and
- significantly lower long term costs due to the reduction in utilising emergency services and infrastructure repairs caused by bushfires.
Some key risks of hazard burning are:
- The major risk to human health is smoke pollution followed by public anxiety.
- Social risks include social divides in communities and unacceptability of hazard burns due to limited awareness of its benefits.
- Economic risks include infrastructure damage or devaluation and high short term cost to taxpayers.
- Environmental risks include the destabilisation of forest ecological biodiversity due to decreased levels of tree bark to provide anthropods habitats, which are a major source of food for other animals (Croft, 2012) (Bowman, 2014).
A possible strategy to manage risks and maximise benefits is to implement an education outreach program that is centred around home-visits where 1-2 specialists attend at-risk homes in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas to provide personalised, face-to-face education on hazard reduction burning. This will increase social acceptability and support, while empowering them with knowledge on expected impacts to best manage their individual exposure to risks.
A procedure that could be implemented during every hazard burn operation is to monitor levels of major air pollutants at varying distances from the source (hazard burn location) in order to have oversight of the impacts on the community when compared against the Australian air quality standards.
The above procedure would help inform decision-makers in providing more effective risk communication strategies with the community and assess what additional control measures are required to reduce the risk of adverse human health effects caused by hazard burn smoke pollution.
What is your opinion on Hazard Reduction Burning? Are you in favour of it to reduce the risk of uncontrolled bushfires or do you disagree on account of not accepting the human health risk of smoke inhalation?
References:
- Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2000) Quantification of the Health Effects of Exposure to Air Pollution; Report of a WHO Working Group, Bilthoven, Netherlands, World Health Organisation
- Bowman, D. (2014) Explainer: back burning and fuel reduction, The Conversation
[URL] http://theconversation.com/explainer-back-burning-and-fuel-reduction-20605 - Croft, P., et. al. (2012) The bark of eucalpt trees: habitat quality for arthropods and impact of fire, Biological Science Database
- Department of the Environment and Energy (2005) Smoke from biomass burning, Australian Government
[URL] http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/publications/smoke-biomass-burning - Department of the Environment and Energy (2017) Air quality standards, Australian Government
[URL] http://www.environment.gov.au/protection/air-quality/air-quality-standards - De Vos, A. et. al. (2008) Respiratory Irritants in Australian Bushfire Smoke: Air Toxics Sampling in a Smoke Chamber and During Prescribed Burns, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
- Engebreson, J. et. al. (2016) Characterizing Public Tolerance of Smoke from Wildland Fires in Communities across the United States, Society of American Foresters, Boiolgical Science Database
- McCaffrey, S. (2004) Fighting Fire with Education: What Is the Best Way to Reach Out to Homeowners? Journal of Forestry; Jul/Aug 2004; 102, 5; Biological Science Database
- Snider, G., et. al. (2006) The Irrationality of Continued Fire Suppression: An Avoided Cost, Journal of Forestry; Dec 2006; 104, 8; Biological Science Database
- Weisshaupt, B., et. al. (2005) Acceptability of Smoke From Prescribed Forest Burning in the Northern Inland West: A Focus Group, Journal of Forestry; Jun 2005; 103, 4; Biological Science Database
Image Source:
All the non cited images are available for Reuse under Creative Commons Licenses from either Pixabay, Pexels, or Wikipedia Commons.
Thank you for your great post!
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@originalworks
I'm not sure what to think of this since it's not a thing in Sweden but as you point out it has both good and bad sides.
I think it's great that you educate and write about this topic so people can see both sides of it =)
Thanks for reading, Nicole! I can't imagine Sweden needing to do much preventative action to avoid bush fires. These sorts of issues such as safety burning are what Public Health professionals focus on in order to make the most healthy, ethical and economically-viable decisions for the safety and livelihoods of the country's people.
It's not as straightforward as having just one criteria to make such a decision of whether to do safety reduction burning or not; it involves a holistic analysis including not just the health impacts of humans, wildlife, the natural environment and its ecological biodiversity, but also the 'health' of the community/state/nation's economies.
For example, without safety burning, the risks of uncontrolled bush fires affect the economy because the Emergency Services' costs of responding to the fires are exponentially more costly to the government than the preventative safety burning programs throughout each year. This is tax-payer's dollars that could be more effectively invested into the health care system which would likely provide a higher level of health equity for the population at large, for instance. So, infrequent smoke pollution caused by safety burning on the outskirts of urban areas seems more equitable and ethical for the population.
No not really in need for that :)
It really seems like they make an educated decision. What if they could look on all issues like this. Such as health care and education.
Thank you so much for clarifying and providing me with further info. Really an interesting topic =)
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