Smog and smoke: The West’s air is the dirtiest it’s been since 2009

A growing economy, looser regulations and uptick in fires are all factors.

High Country News
Nov 4 · 2 min read

This article was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

California’s Kincade and Getty fires — burning across the state’s northern wine region and Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Mountains — have consumed almost 80,000 acres of land and prompted more than 200,000 evacuations. The Kincade Fire alone threatens 90,000 structures. By Wednesday morning both fires were almost 20% contained, but severe winds could reverse progress firefighters have made. Meanwhile, almost a dozen other large fires are burning across the state.

Smoke from the 2018 Camp Fire caused many people in the area to wear masks. Here, people wave as the motorcade for President Trump passed by on his visit to the nearby town of Paradise, California, last November.

Add to their many tragic consequences — the loss of life and property, the dislocation, the strain on resources — the fact that wildfires release large amounts of pollution into the atmosphere. A study published last week by the National Bureau of Economic Research from air pollution scientists at Carnegie Mellon University revealed that for the first time since 2009, air quality nationwide had plummeted, and nowhere fared worse than the West. Between 2016 and 2018, the levels of fine particulate matter — inhalable specks of liquids and solids that make up air pollution — increased by 11.5%. The result? Vulnerable people in these areas experience a greater number of heart attacks, strokes, and worsening of pulmonary conditions such as emphysema and asthma.

Researchers also found that the increase in air pollution since 2016 has caused almost 10,000 premature deaths across the country, with more than 40% of them in California alone. Karen Clay, an economics and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon and one of the study’s authors, speculates that the overall increase in California’s air pollution comes from myriad sources, including increased economic activity and a decline in EPA regulation enforcement. Wildfires are one important factor in the uptick, but, she says, their specific impact is difficult to measure with any accuracy.

One way to do so, though, is look at health data of people who have been exposed to those fires. According to Dr. Nicholas Kenyon, a professor and pulmonologist at UC Davis, the school’s Environmental Health Sciences Center has been conducting surveys of Californians in areas affected by wildfires. The research hasn’t been published yet, but the numbers he’s seen are troubling — especially when it comes to preexisting conditions like asthma.

“Fifty percent of them had worsening asthma symptoms,” he says. “These were folks who were from a few miles to many miles away [from fire events].”

Read the rest of the story here: https://www.hcn.org/articles/climate-desk-smog-and-smoke-the-wests-air-is-the-dirtiest-its-been-since-2009

High Country News

The nation’s leading source of reporting on the American West.

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Working to inform and inspire people — through in-depth journalism — to act on behalf of the West’s diverse natural and human communities.

High Country News

The nation’s leading source of reporting on the American West.

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