Burning and its Effects on Cardiovascular and Respiratory Health of the Population of the eastern Region of the Brazilian Legal Amazon

Air pollution represents one of the greatest public health problems, even when at levels considered safe by the environmental legislation (Castro et al., 2003; Bakonyi et al., 2004). In the Brazilian Amazon region air pollution is caused mainly due to the burning of forest biomass. The main current outbreaks burned in the Amazon are associated with farming in scale family and livestock, corresponding, respectively, to the practice of land preparation for planting used for centuries by farmers of the Amazon and various tropical regions, known as itinerant agriculture, migratory or slash-and-burn (slash-and-burn agriculture), and the burning of pastures infested with invasive plants for its renewal. This study aims at verifying the association between outbreaks of fires combined with meteorological variable air temperature and hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases in eastern Legal Amazon. Monthly data were used from hospitalizations, burnings and air temperature. Hospitalizations data were obtained from the database of the computer department of the Unified Health System (DATASUS) the list of morbidity of the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10, the circulatory system (Acute Myocardial Infarction diseases, Other diseases Ischemic Heart disorders, Driving and Cardiac Arrhythmias, Heart Failure, Other heart diseases) and respiratory diseases (Acute pharyngitis and tonsillitis, laryngitis and tracheitis Acute, other Acute upper airway Infections, Influenza, acute bronchitis and Bronchiolitis, Other diseases of the Upper Respiratory Tract, Asthma, Bronchiectasis); data from burned of Portal Monitoring burnings and fire satellite in near real time by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and air temperature data from the Bank of Meteorological Data for Education and Research of the National Institute of Meteorology (INMET) of the localities situated in the Eastern Region of the Amazon (Capital of the State of Tocantins and Pará), municipalities located near the region known as the deforestation arc. To detect the association between the variables under study was done using the generalized linear models introduced by Nelder and Wedderburn (1972) which correspond to a flexible generalization of ordinary least squares regression. Relates to random distribution of the dependent variable (the distribution function) with the systematic part (non-random) through the link function. The computer program used for this analysis was the free software R (2.15.0). The results showed increased cardiovascular disease, higher than the increase of respiratory diseases in the study period and 1% statistical association of significance between the fires and the air temperature with cardiovascular disease and 5% significance with respiratory diseases. We conclude that in this Amazon region the effects of fires, combined with the air temperature possibly influence the number of hospitalizations for heart disease with greater statistical significance that for respiratory diseases. It is expected to contribute to the planning of public policies both locally and for the other regions with similar weather conditions.