title: The pyrohealth transition: how combustion emissions have shaped health through human history.
abstract: Air pollution from landscape fires, domestic fires and fossil fuel combustion is recognized as the single most important global environmental risk factor for human mortality and is associated with a global burden of disease almost as large as that of tobacco smoking. The shift from a reliance on biomass to fossil fuels for powering economies, broadly described as the pyric transition, frames key patterns in human fire usage and landscape fire activity. These have produced distinct patters of human exposure to air pollution associated with the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions and post-industrial the Earth global system-wide changes increasingly known as the Anthropocene. Changes in patterns of human fertility, mortality and morbidity associated with economic development have been previously described in terms of demographic, epidemiological and nutrition transitions, yet these frameworks have not explicitly considered the direct consequences of combustion emissions for human health. To address this gap, we propose a pyrohealth transition and use data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) collaboration to compare direct mortality impacts of emissions from landscape fires, domestic fires, fossil fuel combustion and the global epidemic of tobacco smoking. Improving human health and reducing the environmental impacts on the Earth system will require a considerable reduction in biomass and fossil fuel combustion.This article is part of the themed issue 'The interaction of fire and mankind'.
authors.affiliation: Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 23, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia fay.johnston@utas.edu.au.
authors.forename: Fay H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Johnston
authors.affiliation: Menzies Institute for Medical Research, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 23, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia.
authors.forename: Shannon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Melody
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 55, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia.
authors.forename: David M J S
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8075-124X
authors.initials: DM
authors.lastname: Bowman
mesh_terms: D000397:Air Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects*; D004782:Environmental Health; D005390:Fires; D005579:Fossil Fuels; D006801:Humans; D012906:Smoke / Q000009:adverse effects*; D014934:Wood
chemical_list: D005579:Fossil Fuels; D012906:Smoke
keywords: air pollution; biomass smoke; epidemiological transition; landscape fire; mortality; particulate matter