Amazon Rainforest Fire: Extensive Toxic Cloud in the Southern Hemisphere

A huge toxic carbon monoxide cloud is floating south of the equator, according to NASA data interpreted by extreme weather portal Severe Weather Europe. The poison has spread mainly over Central South America, but currents extend it all the way to the west coast of Mexico and the southernmost parts of Africa, Nikolay Vasilkovski wrote for NOVA TV.

The cloud grows from the continuing fires in the Amazon forests. The outbreaks are more than 72,000, and according to calculations by the Brazil's Space Research Institute, every minute an area of ​​one and a half football fields burns. Compared to last year's series of fires, the number of fires is now 80 percent higher.

Carbon monoxide has no characteristic colour and odour. The gas is highly toxic. Inhaled in large concentrations, the consequences can be fatal. It leads to headache, nausea, loss of orientation and vision, coma, even death.

Fires in the Amazon are a fact every year. One of the reasons for them is the human activity, and in particular the ambitions of industry and agriculture to utilize more usable land. At the same time, the destruction of the lungs of the planet is devastating to the humanity. Forests in the Brazilian jungle provide at least 20% of the fresh oxygen in the atmosphere, environmentalists recall.

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