Ask anyone who lived in Washington’s Wenatchee Valley in 2012 about the smoke that year, and they’ll remember. The fires were close and the valley’s dry hillsides trapped the wildfire smoke. It was so bad clinics and drug stores ran out of masks. The air was so choked with smoke that summer camps were canceled and children were kept inside.
Climate change is advancing. Snowpack is decreasing, and summers are hotter and drier. A century’s worth of fire suppression is leaving forests overloaded with fuel. All of that is creating the conditions for wildfires to spread quickly and widely and burn huge trees along with the underbrush. Fire seasons are now 105 days longer in the western U.S. than they were in the 1970s. And longer wildfire seasons means more smoke pouring into cities and towns.
Dan Jaffe, a professor who researches air pollution at the University of Washington in Bothell, has published a paper in a scientific journal this summer that showed that the most polluted days of the year are becoming even more polluted in the Intermountain West. A separate look at air quality data by the non-advocacy news and science organization Climate Central show researchers found a similar trend: In Washington, Oregon and California’s Central Valley, a higher percentage of poor air quality days are occurring during wildfire season.
“These effects are very clearly linked to climate change,” Jaffe says — which means as climate change advances, air quality is likely to get worse.
People with lung conditions are more likely to refill their prescriptions, go to the doctor, and be hospitalized during wildfire smoke events. Researchers with the EPA say that, between hospital admissions, emergency room visits, and premature deaths, wildfire smoke exposure costs the U.S. between $11 billion and $20 billion per year.
When pregnant mothers are exposed to wildfire smoke, there’s a “small but significant decline in birth weight,” says Colleen Reid, a geography professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder who researches the public health effects of wildfire smoke.
Reid says scientists haven’t finished teasing out all the other potential health effects of wildfire smoke. They’re most worried about PM2.5, a component of wildfire smoke and other sources of air pollution that is so small it can make its way into human lungs and bloodstream.
Other, more extensively studied sources of air pollution are known to harm cardiovascular health and can increase the risk of obesity and diabetes.
— source climatecentral.org by Eilis O’Neill, Maya Miller. 2018