MANAUS, Brazil (AP) — Smoke from wildfires in Brazil's Amazon rainforest Wednesday was causing people in the region to cough, burning their throats and reddening their eyes. Large swaths of the country have been draped in smoke in recent days, resulting from fires raging across the Amazon, Cerrado savannah, Pantanal wetland and the state of Sao Paulo. Residents are feeling the sting, including Fátima Silva, a 60-year-old farmer in the Amazonian town of Labrea.
“I am not well. I am feeling short of breath, my throat hurts, my eyes need eye drops, I can’t go out on the street, I can’t go anywhere because everything is white with smoke,” Silva told The Associated Press in a voice note, adding that her grandchildren are coughing so much they can hardly sleep. “My grandchildren, my children, everyone is getting sick.
Today it got even worse. No one can stand it,” she said. Fires are traditionally used for deforestation and for managing pastures, and those man-made blazes are largely responsible for igniting the wildfires.
In the Amazon, there have been 53,620 fire spots between Jan. 1 and Aug. 27, an 83% increase from the same period last year, according to the National Institute for Space Research, a federal agency.
Across the Amazon, many areas were classified as having “very bad” or “terrible” air pollution Wednesday, according to the the State University of Amazonas' environmental monitoring system. In cases of wildfires and due to the resulting smoke, .