Almost 100,000 deaths a year: the global health consequences of wildfires revealed

Smoke from wildfires led to nearly 100,000 additional deaths annually between 2010 and 2018.

This is stated in a bulletin of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).

According to its data, the number of severe forest fires is growing, which leads to serious health consequences due to the toxicity of the smoke. "Since the 1990s, the number of cases of extreme smoke pollution from fires in the world has tripled, which, according to available estimates, resulted in almost 100,000 excess deaths per year in the period from 2010 to 2018," the authors of the bulletin note, specifying that the real figures may be higher.

According to the organization's experts, standard risk assessment models do not take into account the degree of toxicity of the smoke and underestimate the associated mortality by up to 93%. The WMO also warns that the growth of pollution as a result of fires and heat is capable of nullifying international efforts to improve air quality.

According to the organization's information, in 2025 the concentration of health-hazardous fine particulate matter PM2.5 exceeded average values in northern Canada, in part of the territory of Russia and in Western and Central Africa. WMO experts link this to the growing number of fires. Another zone of severe pollution last year turned out to be the northwest of Spain.