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This story originally appeared on High Country News and is part of the Climate desk collaboration
The more researchers learn about the fire’s smoke, the more troubling the picture becomes. Smoke contains microscopic particles called PM 2.5 because PM (particulate matter) measures 2.5 microns or less – small enough to easily make its way into our lungs and then into our blood. Researchers have already connected the particulate matter in wildfire smoke to a higher risk stroke, heart disease, respiratory disease, lung cancer, and other serious conditions.
And the harmful effects don’t stop there. 2024 has been a banner year for research into smoke and its impact on health, from brain function to fertility. While there is still much more to learn, fire 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 results are disturbing. But the more we learn about smoke, the better we can protect ourselves from it, if we live hundreds of kilometers away from a fire or face directly the way wild firefighters. The research highlights the need for some changes, including better indoor air filtration systems in our homes, hospitals, schoolsand care homesand clean air centers for people with no other place to breathe healthy air. Meanwhile, respiratory for wildland firefighters are currently being tested by the federal government. We also need to reduce smoke pollution at source by taking measures to reduce fire risk and intensity, such as prescribed burns.
Here are some of the biggest advances in scientists’ understanding of fire smoke in 2024:
New Estimates Predict 125 Million Americans Will Face Unhealthy Air From Fires By 2054
The smoke of the fire has deleted 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, he said models released by the First Street Foundation in February. It is estimated that by 2054, more than 125 million Americans each year will be exposed to “red” air quality, considered a unhealthy Level from the Environmental Protection Agency – a 50 percent increase by 2024. California’s Central Valley will see the worst of it, with Fresno and Tulare County likely to face three months a year of unhealthy air , according to the study.
Smoking can interfere with fertility treatments
The wildfires that started over the Labor Day weekend in 2020 covered Oregon with some of the worse air quality in the world at that time. Those 10 or more days of smoky air affect everyone, especially patients undergoing in vitro fertilization, or IVF, treatments. Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University studied 69 patients who received ovarian stimulation and IVF treatment in the six weeks following the fires. His study, published in the magazine Fertility and Sterility in May, found that patients exposed to fire smoke produced fewer blastocysts – clusters of cells that can develop into embryos – than those who were not exposed. Most patients are still pregnant, but the lead author of the study said she is concerned about how smoking can affect fertility treatments. She said to Idaho Capital Sun that, as an extra precaution, fertility producers could delay IVF or embryo transfer for patients at higher risk during times of poor air quality.
Fire smoke kills people prematurely
Thousands more died due to the smoke of the wildfire than that which had been realized before, according to a study of the University of California, Los Angeles. New research published in the journal Science Advances in June found that fine particulate matter in smoke resulted in 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 increased exposure to wildfire smoke in a state that, like other Western states, is seeing more frequent and more severe wildfires. .
Exposure to smoke is bad for adolescent mental health
The researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder found that secondhand smoke increases the risk of mental health challenges in adolescents. U to studypublished in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives in September, analyzed data from 10,000 preteens 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 children were exposed to “unsafe” air quality readings in 2016 increased the likelihood that they had symptoms of depression and anxiety, even up to a year later.
Years of Firefighting Can Lead to Neurodegenerative Diseases
Lab rats aren’t people, of course. But in a controlled environment, they can offer useful insight into the consequences for human health. Researchers exposed mice to an amount of smoke equivalent to what a wildland firefighter would breathe over a 15- to 30-year career found which were more likely to develop brain disease than unexposed mice. The animals’ gene profiles fit a pattern that suggests long-term damage similar to the effects of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. While researchers cannot prove that smoking is the direct cause of increased disease risk, lead author Adam Schuller said. Boise State Public Radio that firefighters need to be aware of the impact that a long career in firefighting can have on the human brain.
Fire smoke is linked to dementia
Breathing in particulate matter in air pollution has already been linked to an increased risk of dementia. Now, researchers say, fire smoke may be an even greater risk than other sources of pollution. Analysis of over 1.2 million people in Southern California found that exposure to secondhand smoke over a long period – three years, in this study – was associated with a higher risk of dementia diagnosis. According to the study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology, the chances of a diagnosis of dementia increased by 18 percent for every microgram per cubic meter increase in fire pollution in three years, a relatively small amount. In order comparisonsthe 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.
