From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Wildfire Smoke Is Erasing Gains From Decades of Cleaner Air   
   By Eric Niiler, Sept. 20, 2023, WSJ   
   Pollution from recent wildfires has reduced—or in some states    
   liminated—decades of improvements in air quality across a swath of the U.S.    
      
   The air above the country has become significantly healthier since passage of   
   the Clean Air Act in 1970, which limited industrial pollutants and vehicle   
   tailpipe emissions. But increasing pollution from wildfire smoke has reversed   
   or stalled air-quality    
   improvements in 41 of 48 states, according to a new study published Wednesday   
   in the journal Nature.   
      
   “It was surprising to us that many more states in the country were   
   significantly influenced by wildfire smoke,” said Marshall Burke, an author   
   of the study and an associate professor of sustainability at Stanford   
   University. “The influence is    
   larger in the West, but it’s still detectable throughout a lot of the   
   country, throughout a lot of the Midwest, the South and the East.”   
      
   In 41 states, wildfire smoke has erased 25%—or about four years—of the   
   air-quality progress made in previous decades. Western states such as Oregon,   
   Washington and California have suffered the most.   
      
   The new study found that small airborne particles were declining before 2016   
   in all but seven states in the contiguous U.S.   
      
   Wildfires are just one source of small particles of airborne pollution, known   
   as PM2.5, for particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in size. In comparison,   
   a human hair is 20 to 30 times larger in diameter, according to the U.S.   
   Environmental Protection    
   Agency.   
      
   Other sources of particulate matter include fossil-fuel-burning power plants,   
   industrial facilities, vehicle tailpipe exhaust and dust from farmers’   
   fields.   
      
   Particles from these emissions pass through the body’s defenses and bury   
   themselves deep in the lungs, where they can cause a variety of acute and   
   chronic health problems, especially for vulnerable populations such as   
   children, the elderly and those    
   with pre-existing conditions.    
      
   To separate wildfires from other sources of particulate pollution, the   
   researchers from Stanford and Harvard universities devised a method of   
   identifying wildfire particles using satellite imagery to trace the path of   
   the smoke. They combined this    
   information with data from nearly 2,500 ground-based air-pollution sensors   
   collected by the EPA from 2000 to 2022.   
      
   Burke noted that the study didn’t include data from this year, when hundreds   
   of Canadian wildfires poured smoke across much of the Northeast and Midwest   
   for many weeks. In early June, New York City for several days reported the   
   planet’s worst air    
   quality at that time as a result of the fires, while Chicago and Detroit   
   experienced hazardous conditions a few weeks later.   
      
   Adding data from this year’s Canadian fires “would just make our results   
   stronger,” Burke said.   
      
   In August, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published two   
   studies about the health impacts of the 2023 wildfires, which led to a spike   
   in people with asthma visiting emergency rooms, especially in the New York   
   area. Nationwide, hospital    
   visits were up 17% during the worst of the smoke between April and August,   
   according to data from 4,000 hospitals surveyed by the CDC.   
      
   Wildfire smoke is being linked to other health problems as well. Smoke from   
   California wildfires coincided with an 18% to 22% spike in cases of invasive   
   fungal infections in 22 hospitals across the state, according to a May study   
   published in the journal    
   Lancet Planetary Health. Researchers found that fungal spores in the soils of   
   California are lofted into the air by wildfires. When inhaled, the spores can   
   lead to Valley fever, an infection that can cause respiratory symptoms   
   including cough, fever,    
   chest pain and tiredness.   
      
   Controlling wildfire smoke will be challenging in coming years, as warming   
   atmospheric temperatures are expected to result in drier soil conditions,   
   increasing periods of drought and more pests that damage trees, all of which   
   contribute to wildfires.   
      
   At the same time, inadequate forest-management practices and increasing human   
   development in forested areas are making fires bigger, more intense and more   
   likely to occur, according to Michael Jerrett, a professor of environmental   
   health sciences at UCLA.   
      
   Jerrett said the new study follows similar research he has pursued in   
   California.   
      
   “The thoroughness of the study is one of its strengths,” said Jerrett, who   
   wasn’t part of the study. “It’s an important point that they’re making   
   that it’s not just a Western U.S. problem.”   
      
   Vijay Limaye, a climate and health scientist at the Natural Resources Defense   
   Council, said the study might serve as a wake-up call for people who might   
   have dismissed wildfire smoke as just a short-term health problem. He said   
   officials need to upgrade    
   early warning systems and air-quality monitoring so that residents can more   
   easily know whether they need to limit their time outdoors.   
      
   “There is essentially no safe level of exposure to wildfire smoke,” Limaye   
   said.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/science/environment/wildfire-smoke-is-erasin   
   -gains-from-decades-of-cleaner-air-e53c6559   
      
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