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This story was originally published by High Country News and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
The more researchers learn about wildfire smoke, the more worrisome the picture gets. Smoke contains microscopic particles known as PM 2.5 because the PM (particulate matter) measures 2.5 microns or less — small enough to easily wiggle its way into our lungs and then into our bloodstreams. Researchers have already connected the particulate matter in wildfire smoke to a higher risk of strokes, heart disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer and other serious conditions.
And the harmful effects don’t stop there. 2024 was a banner year for research on wildfire smoke and its impact on health, from brain functioning to fertility. While there’s still a lot more to learn, wildfire smoke is thought to be especially insidious compared to other sources of air pollution; its smaller particle size, intermittent spikes and higher concentration of inflammatory compounds make it more dangerous.
This year’s new findings are disturbing. But the more we learn about smoke, the better we can protect ourselves from it, whether we live hundreds of miles away from a fire or confront it directly the way wildland firefighters do. Research underscores the need for some changes, including better indoor air filtration systems in our homes, hospitals, schools and nursing homes and clean air centers for people with nowhere else to breathe healthy air. Meanwhile, respirators for wildland firefighters are currently being tested by the federal government. We also need to reduce smoke pollution at the source by taking measures to reduce wildfire risk and intensity, like prescribed burns.
Here are some of the biggest advancements in scientists’ understanding of wildfire smoke in 2024:
New estimates predict 125 million Americans will face unhealthy air from wildfires by 2054.
Wildfire smoke has erased improvements in air quality in recent years, a trend that is expected to continue. Millions more people will be exposed to unhealthy air in the coming years, according to models released by the First Street Foundation in February. It’s estimated that by 2054, over 125 million Americans each year will be exposed to “red” air quality, considered an unhealthy level by the Environmental Protection Agency — a 50% increase from 2024. California’s Central Valley will see the worst of it, with Fresno and Tulare County likely facing three months a year of unhealthy air, according to the study.
Smoke can hamper fertility treatments.
The fires that started over Labor Day weekend in 2020 blanketed Oregon with some of the worst air quality in the world at the time. Those 10 or so days of smoky air affected everyone, especially patients undergoing in vitro fertilization treatments, or IVF. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University studied 69 patients who received ovarian stimulation and IVF treatment in the six weeks following the wildfires. Their study, published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in May, found that patients exposed to wildfire smoke produced fewer blastocysts — clusters of cells that can develop into embryos — than those who weren’t exposed. Most of the patients still got pregnant, but the study’s lead author said she is worried about how smoke may affect fertility treatments. She told the Idaho Capital Sun that, as an extra precaution, fertility providers may want to delay IVF or embryo transfer for higher-risk patients during times of poor air quality.
Wildfire smoke is prematurely killing people.
Thousands more have died due to wildfire smoke than previously realized, according to a study from the University of California, Los Angeles. New research published in the journal Science Advances in June found that the fine particulate matter in smoke resulted in from 52,500 to 55,700 premature deaths from 2008 to 2018 in California. According to its authors, this is the first long-term study to assess deaths caused by years of increasing exposure to wildfire smoke in a state that, like other Western states, is seeing more frequent and more severe wildfires.
Smoke exposure is bad for adolescent mental health.
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that wildfire smoke increases the risk of mental health challenges in adolescents. The study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in September, analyzed data from 10,000 pre-teens who participated in the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, according to the university. Each additional day that the children were exposed to “unsafe” air quality readings in 2016 boosted the likelihood that they would experience symptoms of depression and anxiety — even up to one year later.
Years of firefighting could lead to neurodegenerative diseases.
Lab rats aren’t people, of course. But in a controlled setting, they can offer useful insight into human health consequences. Researchers who exposed mice to an amount of smoke equivalent to what a wildland firefighter would breathe over a 15-to-30-year career found that they were more likely to develop brain disease than mice that weren’t exposed. The profiles of the animals’ genes fit a pattern that suggests long-term damage akin to the effects of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. While researchers can’t prove that smoke is the direct cause of the heightened disease risk, lead author Adam Schuller told Boise State Public Radio that wildland firefighters need to be aware of the impact a long career in firefighting can have on the human brain.
Wildfire smoke is linked to dementia.
Breathing in the particulate matter in air pollution has already been linked to an increased risk of dementia. Now, researchers say, wildfire smoke may pose an even greater risk than other pollution sources. Analysis of more than 1.2 million people in Southern California found that exposure to wildfire smoke over a long period — three years, in this study — was associated with a higher risk of a dementia diagnosis. According to the study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology, the odds of a dementia diagnosis rose by 18% for every microgram per cubic meter increase in wildfire pollution over three years, a relatively small amount. For comparison, the average PM 2.5 exposure for a census tract near the 2018 Camp Fire in California was 1.2 micrograms per cubic meter between 2006 and 2020, spiking to an exposure of 310 micrograms per cubic meter during the actual fire.
Comments
more half truths.
how can one find the truth to a subject without all the facts?
big difference between complete-combustion and incomplete-combustion.
forest fire smoke is not near as toxic as they say it is, and here is the proof.
Forest fires only happen when the conditions are hot and dry, moisture is driven out.
forest fires burn hot and clean, emitting gray ash, which is not smoke but ash that is sucked up from the draft created by the heat. forest fire ashes are the building blocks of life, fires spread nontoxic ALKALINE micronutrients. this is the reason woodstove ash is great for your garden and after a forest fire the plant life explodes in lush abundant life.
the other fact is that we can tell by the number of people emitted to the hospitals during summer wildfires; very few people are in emergency from summer fires compared to winter time when government slash burns on a massive scale, wet green cold wood pushed into a tight pile then covered with diesel to force it to ignite, only slash piles don't burn, they smolder, spewing BLUE smoke. blue smoke is very toxic and acidic, blue smoke is the result of noncomplete combustion.
include science in one's reasoning goes a long way; the combustion process of wood consists of heat converting the solid wood first to a liquid, then to a vapour, then to plasma before final combustion, this requires heat and adiquite oxygen.
blue smoke is the result of incomplete combustion< the combustion process is STOPPED bc of being to cold, wet and/or not enough oxygen.
gray smoke emits smoke which are harmless elements, phosphorus and micro nutrients, things that make your garden grow...
blue smoke emits toxic smoke that is a compound, consisting of toxic elements such as benzene and other things harmful to life, its also acidic, and sometimes its so thick you can taste the tar. this is the result of stopping the combustion process while the wood is liquid bc of poor conditions. anyone who's had a woodstove and burnt green wood or choked it off so it can't get enough air end up with a liquid tar dripping down the chimney. that is un burnt wood, and in fact back during the war when there was no gas, farmers and others would run their tractors trucks and cars on wood gasification. that gas can kill, which is why they "gas" people to death.
government in its ignorance and malice demonizes residential wood stoves, which burn hot dry wood with pleanty of oxygen resulting in zero smoke [complete combustion]
while on the flip side, government ignores the laws of nature, encouraging slash burning of logging corporations and even paying first nations to slash burn, but lets look at the problems of slash burning.
tens of thousands of slash piles all over the province are light in the middle of winter when the wood is wet and cold, often green wood left over from clear cut logging, piles pushed into tight piles, often with dirt compacted into them; the wood will not burn bc it goes against the laws of nature< understand>? what does happen is the slash piles are ignited by dumping huge amounts of diesel, [ a toxic fossil fuel] in order to get a fire started, only it doesn't burn, it smolders for days, thick toxic blue smoke fills the valleys, fills the entire province for months on end. Part of what drives forest fires is the heat rising as a result of the hot weather and fire create as super draft that creates complete combustion.
my son was born with asthma, and every year in the winter time I'd rush him to the hospital bc he couldn't breathe, but not during the summer.
the "particulate 2.5" is a scam, a half truth, the only thing "they" focus on, when what it comes down to is the compounds compared to ash, again, ash is complete combustion, non toxic, alkaline, blue smoke is compound, unburnt wood, toxic and acidic.
notice the government universities and media don't identify any other particulate, like road dust as harmful, they allow all the factories and mills to produce toxic emission particulate, blue smoke, often in or near residential areas to smoke 24/7/365 without a whisper. Anyone who tries to stop the mills from smoking out the neighborhood loses in courts bc the courts are biased and corrupt.
there was a man who tried to get the pellet mill to stop smoking in Penticton BC, he went to court, produced the evidence, and lost, he was sent a bill for $35 000 to pay the legal costs, detering anyone else from bringing a suit to clean up the air.
I sell woodstoves, and I used to be a mechanic, air fuel in any combustion is the key to efficiency and clean burning. Of course the government is demonizing woodstoves, and trying to ban them while turning a blind eye to mills that produce huge amounts of blue smoke filling the whole valley with toxic blue smoke.
but whats worse is the govenment and corporations say that garbage should be incinorated, right in the middle of Burnaby BC they have a garbage incinorator that burns garbage 24/7/365 a year. their argument is that they burn the plastic and garbage so hot that there is nothing left, no smoke. but lets inject some commonsense using science.
again, an element can go through the fires of hell and still be an element, notice gold and silver after a house fire can be picked up. but garbage and plastics have some of the worst elements, very toxic, batteries of lead cadnim and mercury are burnt, light bulbs, and tons of toxic crap. oh yah they burn it so hot you can't see the elements with the naked eye bc the extreme heat breaks it down into micro sizes particles. but the make no mistake, the air is full of toxic elements that go into the air, people breathe it, goes directly into the blood streme, its not the 2.5 microns that are the problem, its the .025 microns, which of course government doesn't measure, doesn't exist in their lawless world.
I read an article where a garbage incinerator somewhere in eastern canada is in the middle of a first nations reserve, the people are getting sick, and feeling like crap, they are trying to get it stopped, but of course government is a god and can dictate much the same way Hitler did, making everything they did/do legal. then of course, subjugating and controlling the courts ran by the Freemasons to ignore any claims or evidence.
as such right now all over the world they building thousands of garbage incinerators, England leading the charge building dozens of new garbage incinerators, meanwhile banning and demonizing woodstoves.
for thousands of years mans has used wood to heat and cook with no cancers and sicknesses, no asthma, it wasn't until 100 years ago with man digging up trillions of tons of oil coal and lng and sulfur lead mercury to use in industry that all these things have become an epidemic.
If the National Observer is truly fighting for the people they'd print the truth, the details, the crimes of humanity. but if the National Observer is merely meant to make it LOOK like they care, and are really just another propaganda machine used to mislead and deflect from the real criminals, then they'll print gibberish like the articles above, using half truths and peoples ignorance to push an agenda that demonizes the good things while ignoring things like the emissions from tar sands, that use 3 parts lng and three parts water to boil the sands down to get one part crude marketable oil, emitting huge amounts of toxic compounds and elements that are contaminating every living thing on the planet.
something to add, the only time forest fire smoke IS super toxic is when it burns through a residential area where houses have more oil in the form of plastics are consumed in large numbers.
also when a forest fire rips through a place that used to have mining, like yellow knife bc where arsenic was mined, then the smoke is obviously contaminated with man-made intervention of nature.
again, things that government nor media bothers to highlight, and if they do, well, there is nothing that can be done, and its not important anyways. the most important thing for government and media to do is focus on residential wood stoves that the BC governmetn has labled as "the worst sourse of pollution" for the entire 365 days a year"
then they turn a blind eye to diesels for which there are zero regulations in Canada, and where most of the world that does regulate diesel emissions sends all their worn out diesel trains and heavy equipment
https://rumble.com/v648wsd-bc-ministry-of-no-health.html
https://rumble.com/v4pb34l-the-destruction-of-the-world.html
https://rumble.com/v4geei5-diesels-have-no-emission-regulations.html