Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 22
Mortality Burden From Wildfire Smoke Under Climate Change
Year: 2024
Wildfire activity has increased in the US and is projected to accelerate under future climate change. However, our understanding of the impacts of climate change on wildfire smoke and health remains highly uncertain. We quantify the past and future mortality burden in the US due to wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5). We construct an ensemble of statistical and machine learning models that link variation in climate to wildfire smoke PM2.5, and empirically estimate smoke PM2.5-mortality relationships using georeferenced data on all recorded deaths in the US from 2006 to 2019. We…
Publication Type: Report
Wildfire Smoke Exposure and Incident Dementia
Year: 2024
Importance: Long-term exposure to total fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a recognized dementia risk factor, but less is known about wildfire-generated PM2.5, an increasingly common PM2.5 source. Objective: To assess the association between long-term wildfire and nonwildfire PM2.5 exposure and risk of incident dementia. Design, Setting, and Participants: This open cohort study was conducted using January 2008 to December 2019 electronic health record (EHR) data among members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California (KPSC), which serves…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A model for rapid PM2.5 exposure estimates in wildfire conditions using routinely available data: rapidfire v0.1.3
Year: 2024
Urban smoke exposure events from large wildfires have become increasingly common in California and throughout the western United States. The ability to study the impacts of high smoke aerosol exposures from these events on the public is limited by the availability of high-quality, spatially resolved estimates of aerosol concentrations. Methods for assigning aerosol exposure often employ multiple data sets that are time-consuming to create and difficult to reproduce. As these events have gone from occasional to nearly annual in frequency, the need for rapid smoke exposure assessments has…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Clearing the air: evaluating institutions’ social media health messaging on wildfire and smoke risks in the US Pacific Northwest
Year: 2024
BackgroundWildfire smoke contributes substantially to the global disease burden and is a major cause of air pollution in the US states of Oregon and Washington. Climate change is expected to bring more wildfires to this region. Social media is a popular platform for health promotion and a need exists for effective communication about smoke risks and mitigation measures to educate citizens and safeguard public health.MethodsUsing a sample of 1,287 Tweets from 2022, we aimed to analyze temporal Tweeting patterns in relation to potential smoke exposure and evaluate and compare institutions’ use…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Metals in Wildfire Suppressants
Year: 2024
Frequent and severe wildfires have led to increased application of fire suppression products (long-term fire retardants, water enhancers, and Class A foams) in the American West. While fire suppressing products used on wildfires must be approved by theU.S. Forest Service, portions of their formulations are trade secrets.Increased metals content in soils and surface waters at the wildland-urban interface has been observed after wildfires but has primarily been attributed to ash deposition or anthropogenic impact from nearby urban areas. In this study, metal concentrations in several fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mortality attributable to PM 2.5 from wildland fires inCalifornia from 2008 to 2018
Year: 2024
In California, wildfire risk and severity have grown substantially in the last several decades. Research has characterized extensive adverse health impacts from exposure to wildfire-attributable fine particulate matter (PM2.5), but few studies have quantified long-term outcomes, and none have used a wildfire-specific chronic dose-response mortality coefficient. Here, we quantified the mortality burden for PM2.5 exposure from California fires from 2008 to 2018 using Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system wildland fire PM2.5 estimates. We used a concentration-response function for PM2…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bacterial Emission Factors: A Foundation for the Terrestrial-Atmospheric Modeling of Bacteria Aerosolized by Wildland Fires
Year: 2024
Wildland fire is a major global driver in the exchange of aerosols between terrestrial environments and the atmosphere. This exchange is commonly quantified using emission factors or the mass of a pollutant emitted per mass of fuel burned. However, emission factors for microbes aerosolized by fire have yet to be determined. Using bacterial cell concentrations collected on unmanned aircraft systems over forest fires in Utah, USA, we determine bacterial emission factors (BEFs) for the first time. We estimate that 1.39 × 1010 and 7.68 × 1011 microbes are emitted for each Mg of biomass consumed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mental Health and Traumatic Occupational Exposure in Wildland Fire Dispatchers
Year: 2024
Wildland fire dispatchers play a key role in wildland fire management and response organization; however, to date, wildland fire studies have largely focused on the physical hazards and, to a lesser extent, mental health hazards of wildland firefighting operational personnel, and dispatcher studies have primarily focused on 911 and police dispatchers. Studies of other dispatchers have provided some limited insight into potential strains impacting this workforce, including work-related fatigue, burnout, and traumatic exposure. However, the specific job hazards that are faced by wildland fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Factors Associated with Concurrent Tobacco Smoking and Heavy Drinking within a Women Firefighters’ Sample
Year: 2024
Studies showed that tobacco use and excessive alcohol consumption frequently occur, and both are significant causes of preventable morbidity and mortality. Data were collected as part of a national online study of the health of women in the fire service. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to determine factors associated with smoking and drinking characteristics. A total of 2330 women firefighters completed questions regarding tobacco and alcohol use; 3.2% (n = 75) were concurrent users, 0.9% (n = 22) were smokers only, 49.4% (n = 1150) were heavy drinkers only, and 46.5% (n = 1083)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring spatial heterogeneity in synergistic effects of compound climate hazards: Extreme heat and wildfire smoke on cardiorespiratory hospitalizations in California
Year: 2024
Extreme heat and wildfire smoke events are increasingly co-occurring in the context of climate change, especially in California. Extreme heat and wildfire smoke may have synergistic effects on population health that vary over space. We leveraged high-resolution satellite and monitoring data to quantify spatially varying compound exposures to extreme heat and wildfire smoke in California (2006–2019) at ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) level. We found synergistic effects between extreme heat and wildfire smoke on daily cardiorespiratory hospitalizations at the state level. We also found spatial…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Quantifying wildland fire resources deployed during the compound threat of COVID-19
Year: 2024
Fire agencies across the United States must make complex resource allocation decisions to manage wildfires using a national network of shared firefighting resources. Firefighters play a critical role in suppressing fires and protecting vulnerable communities. However, they are exposed to health and safety risks associated with fire, smoke inhalation, and infectious disease transmission. The COVID-19 pandemic further complicated these risks, prompting fire agencies to propose resource management adaptations to minimize COVID-19 exposure and transmission. It is unclear if and how the pandemic…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Preliminary Case Study on the Compounding Effects of Local Emissions and Upstream Wildfires on Urban Air Pollution
Year: 2024
Interactions between urban and wildfire pollution emissions are active areas of research, with numerous aircraft field campaigns and satellite analyses of wildfire pollution being conducted in recent years. Several studies have found that elevated ozone and particulate pollution levels are both generally associated with wildfire smoke in urban areas. We measured pollutant concentrations at two Utah Division of Air Quality regulatory air quality observation sites and a local hot spot (a COVID-19 testing site) within a 48 h period of increasing wildfire smoke impacts that occurred in Salt Lake…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Limited availability of health risk communication related to community smoke exposure from prescribed burns in the United States: a review
Year: 2024
Prescribed burns are used to maintain wildland ecosystems and decrease fuel loads and associated wildfire hazard. Prescribed burns may produce enough smoke to cause adverse health outcomes. The aim of this review is to understand what communication materials exist for disseminating health risk information related to prescribed burn smoke and challenges to developing such communication. We examined United States peer-reviewed literature from PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science databases and conducted an environmental scan of grey literature including materials from federal, and several US state…
Publication Type: Journal Article
More smoke today for less smoke tomorrow? We need to better understand the public health benefits and costs of prescribed fire
Year: 2022
Rapidly scaling up the use of prescribed fire is being promoted as an important pathway for reducing the growing damages of wildfire events in the United States, including limiting the health impacts from smoke emissions. However, we do not currently have the science needed to understand how the health impacts associated with prescribed fire smoke in the present compare to wildfire smoke exposure in the future. In particular, we lack an understanding of how the potential long-term public health benefits of prescribed fire on future wildfire smoke and health impacts compare to prescribed fire’…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Increasing co-occurrence of fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone extremes in the western United States
Year: 2022
Wildfires and meteorological conditions influence the co-occurrence of multiple harmful air pollutants including fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ground-level ozone. We examine the spatiotemporal characteristics of PM2.5/ ozone co-occurrences and associated population exposure in the western United States (US). The frequency, spatial extent, and temporal persistence of extreme PM2.5/ozone co-occurrences have increased significantly between 2001 and 2020, increasing annual population exposure to multiple harmful air pollutants by ~25 million person-days/year. Using a clustering methodology…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Smoke Exposure, Human Health, and Environmental Justice Need to be Integrated into Forest Restoration and Management
Year: 2022
Purpose of Review: Increasing wildfire size and severity across the western United States has created an environmental and social crisis that must be approached from a transdisciplinary perspective. Climate change and more than a century of fire exclusion and wildfire suppression have led to contemporary wildfires with more severe environmental impacts and human smoke exposure. Wildfires increase smoke exposure for broad swaths of the US population, though outdoor workers and socially disadvantaged groups with limited adaptive capacity can be disproportionally exposed. Exposure to wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing smoke emissions and impacts under alternative forest management regimes
Year: 2022
Smoke from wildfires has become a growing public health issue around the world but especially in western North America and California. At the same time, managers and scientists recommend thinning and intentional use of wildland fires to restore forest health and reduce smoke from poorly controlled wildfires. Because of the changing climate and management paradigms, the evaluation of smoke impacts needs to shift evaluations from the scale of individual fire events to long-term fire regimes and regional impacts under different management strategies. To confront this challenge, we integrated…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lifestyle and environmental factors may induce airway and systemic inflammation in firefighters
Year: 2022
Health status depends on multiple genetic and non-genetic factors. Nonheritable factors (such as lifestyle and environmental factors) have stronger impact on immune responses than genetic factors. Firefighters work is associated with exposure to air pollution and heat stress, as well as: extreme physical effort, mental stress, or a changed circadian rhythm, among others. All these factors can contribute to both, short-term and long-term impairment of the physical and mental health of firefighters. Increased levels of some inflammatory markers, such as pro-inflammatory cytokines or C-reactive…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing particulate morphology generated from human-made cellulosic fuels to natural vegetative fuels
Year: 2022
Background: In wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, particulates from the combustion of both natural vegetative fuels and engineered cellulosic fuels may have deleterious effects on the environment. Aims: The research was conducted to investigate the morphology of the particulate samples generated from the combustion of oriented strand board (OSB). Findings were compared to the particulate samples collected from the combustion of noble-fir branches. Methods: The exposure conditions were varied to induce either smouldering combustion or flaming combustion of the specimens. Particulate samples…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Comparing particulate morphology generated from human- made cellulosic fuels to natural vegetative fuels
Year: 2022
Background: In wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, particulates from the combustion of both natural vegetative fuels and engineered cellulosic fuels may have deleterious effects on the environment. Aims: The research was conducted to investigate the morphology of the particulate samples generated from the combustion of oriented strand board (OSB). Findings were compared to the particulate samples collected from the combustion of noble-fir branches. Methods: The exposure conditions were varied to induce either smouldering combustion or flaming combustion of the specimens. Particulate samples…
Publication Type: Journal Article