West U.S. Increasing wild forest fires are taking a devastating toll on the region’s air quality, according to a new study. Forest fire fumes now account for half of air pollution in horrific forest years.
Scientists at Stanford University and UC San Diego have found that toxic plumbing fumes, which can burn western states for weeks when WiFi is spreading, are doing away with the decades-old benefits of cutting air pollution. Previously heat-related deaths have been predicted as the worst consequence of a climate crisis, with researchers saying air pollution caused by smoke could be just as fatal.
“Many people in this country will be on the path to climate change,” said Marshall Burke, an associate professor of earth sciences at Stanford and one of the study’s authors. “The contribution of wildfires to poor air quality in the West has almost doubled in the last 15 years.”
Air pollution from fine particles, known as PM2.5, was already known to take four months from the average American’s lifespan. And health researchers are beginning to understand the detrimental health consequences added to the growing population exposure to the U.S. population.
Wildfire asons in the American West, aggravated by the climate crisis, have become increasingly ruthless. In California alone, 1 million people were killed, 10,000 buildings collapsed or damaged, and more than 1 million acres of land were affected by the worst fires in 2020. As well as huge swaths of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona were burned.
After California residents endured a month of orange-brown air filled with dangerous tiny particles, there was a dramatic increase in hospitalization for another group of Stanford researchers for things like stroke, heart attack and asthma.
Bibek Powdell, a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford Asthma Clinic, found a 60% increase in hospitalizations for stroke and related conditions in the five weeks since smoke began to be sent around Northern California in the wake of the lightning strike. The number of pregnancies lost in the weeks following the fire also doubled – a surprise finding that researchers are still interpreting. Podell saw a significant increase in hospitalizations for heart attacks and young people for respiratory illness.
“I don’t think people are aware of the long-term health effects of wildfire smoke,” said Mary Prunick, research director at Stanford’s Sean Ann Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research.
Air quality in the U.S. has improved over the decades due to the reduction in pollution from cars and factories mandated by the Clean Air Act. But in the last 40 years, the amount of land burned by wildfires has quadrupled, Burke’s study found.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, combined data from satellite images of smoking plums, with measurements obtained from air monitors on the ground, to record local air pollution, to model the full exposure to smoke. The study covered all states west (and included) of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.
Smoking plums can be detected by satellite images as they travel around the country. But it is difficult to say whether they are low enough to affect air quality on the ground, so statistical models were created by studying how pollution changed in certain places after fire incidents, combining data from satellites, air monitors and data models.
“Everyone knows that wildfires produce dirty air – so that’s not surprising,” Burke said. “What we were able to do in this study is a testament to how great a contribution it is. And we’ve found that it’s really changing a lot of the progress made across the country in air quality improvement. “
Surprisingly, studies have found that wildfire smoke is spreading the effects of air pollution among white and wealthy people. Historically, low-income communities have been most affected by air pollution, as their homes are closer to freeways and factories. But the smoke spreads pollutants over many wide areas. Burke said the western U.S., where most wildfires occur, is also whiter and richer than other regions of the country.
As the changes travel across the country, pollutants also harm people living in the Midwest or East, away from fires.
“Wildfire smoke is a load that is more evenly distributed than other pollutants,” Burke said.
However, other research has shown that low-income populations are more likely to be shocked when smoking covers an area, as their smaller and older homes give them less protection.
Ironically, future solutions to all of this smoking could be to light more fires.
The increase in firefighters is partly due to warmer temperatures and drier conditions, but there is a growing consensus that it is the result of a nation’s policy of suppressing fires instead of occasionally burning the ground.
“There’s a huge amount of fuel on the ground,” Burke said. “Climate change is drying it up and making it more flammable.”
Burke said the policy of using the proposed burns, which includes incorporating carefully controlled fires to clean some of the brushes, could be a major strategy to reduce wildfires and cut dangerous smoke exposures in future years.
“The benefits can be huge, but there are many key questions that need to be studied,” he said.
Otherwise, “as always in business, years like 2020, which historically charted, may become more common.” “It’s awful to think about that.”
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