Forest fires in Russia cause air pollution

Moscow, August 8 Forest fires Which took place today in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, central Siberia, has raised alarms about the excessive content of solids suspended in the air.

According to studies conducted by the territorial administration of the Federal Service for the Surveillance of Consumer Protection and Welfare (Rospotrebnadzor), the amounts of pollutants harmful to human health exceed sanitary standards.

The TASS news agency reported that smoke was reported in 392 settlements in 17 municipalities of the region, including Krasnoyarsk, Norilsk and Zelenogorsk.

In and around the center of the region, the authorities reported strong burning smells in the air and that visibility on the roads near Krasnoyarsk does not exceed a hundred meters due to smoke.

Rospotrebnadzor organized atmospheric monitoring in Krasnoyarsk to determine the content of harmful pollutants due to smoke from forest fires. This situation was also recorded in the Irkutsk region and the Saja-Yakutia Republic.

The head of the Russian Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergency Situations and Disaster Liquidation, Evgeny Zenichev, reported Thursday that the area of ​​forests inundated with fires since the beginning of the fire season in Russia exceeded six million hectares.

In a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the progress of the confrontation with natural fires, Zinchev explained that since the beginning of the summer there have been 11,000 accidents in the country.

He pointed out that since the first of June of this year, as a result of forest fires, the risks of spreading the fire to 16 settlements have been reported, although “fortunately this did not happen.”

In the Chelyabinsk region, 78 buildings and one building in Karelia were destroyed by fire. In the town of Bias Kweil in Saja also, a fire broke out in dozens of houses, which led to the evacuation of residents.

During the meeting, the Russian president warned that climate change is affecting the causes of forest fires and floods in the Eurasian country.

He noted that the average annual temperature in Russia increased 2.8 times faster than the global average in the past 44 years.

According to the Russian Forestry Agency, the fires have destroyed more than 11.5 million hectares since the beginning of 2021, compared to 8.9 million hectares affected at the annual rate since the beginning of 2000, being the Yakutia region, Siberia, one of the most affected.