Is Amazon jungle polluting air?
RIO DE JANEIRO, June 8 (UPI) — The destruction of the Amazon rain forest may be one of the world’s major sources of air pollution, a published report said Wednesday. Widespread deforestation by burning is producing massive amounts of carbon dioxide and contributing to the planet’s warming, known as the greenhouse effect, warned some scientists. “It (the Amazon rain forest) is not the lungs of the world,” said Daniel Nepstad, an U.S. ecologist who has studied the forest for 20 years, the Los Angeles Times reported. “It’s probably burning up more oxygen now than it’s producing.” Over the last 25 years, a portion of the Amazon rain forest equal in size to the state of California has been destroyed by burning and logging. Last week, Brazilian authorities broke up an illegal logging ring that had been extracting trees from the forest since the early 1990s. The poached timber was valued at an estimated $370 million.
