Study claiming 6,500 deaths in Malaysia due to haze refuted

An August 2015 file picture of Puchong, Selangor, shrouded in haze.

KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia has refuted a Harvard and Columbia University study, claiming that the 2015 South-East Asian haze had caused 6,500 deaths in the country.  

The study, which is expected to be published in the Environmental Research Letters (ERL) journal, also claims that there have been 100,300 premature deaths in the region from the haze; 91,600 in Indonesia and 2,200 in Singapore.