How are Wildfires Affecting Americas Lung Heath?
Over the last several months I have been undergoing pretty severe respiratory inflammation and asthmatic symptoms. Not knowing the cause of these issues has undoubtedly led to some curiosity in the topic of respiratory health in America. Using my own health as a driving force, I was inspired to find out more information on how many people die annually from respiratory diseases (lower, other, influenza and pneumonia) as well as look at Wildfire data and see if there is a relationship between wildfires and respiratory related deaths.
In order to develop a better understanding of a relationship between these two variables, I will start by finding the top 3 states that have had the most detrimental wildfires to humans based on the number of housing units, properties at risk, and percentage of housing units at risk (Howard, 2022). Then I will analyze a dataset produced by the Center for Disease Control and look at if these top three states have a higher rate of respiratory health related deaths compared to the rest.
I will start with analyzing data I found on wildfires that are most detrimental to highly populated areas and humans in general. According to Pat Howard’s article Wildfire statistics: Which U.S. states have the most wildfires?, “…wildfires in Colorado burned 48,195 acres in 2021 — the 18th-most of any U.S. state. However, Colorado has the 3rd-most properties at high to extreme risk of wildfire damage. While 2018’s Camp Fire in Northern California wasn’t even one of the 20 largest wildfires in the state’s history, it was by far the most costly. The Camp Fire burned around 150,000 acres, destroyed around 19,000 structures, and killed 85 people”. This excerpt brings into light how any size fire can be very detrimental to human life depending on where they burn and the infrastructure around it. According to Versisk Wildfire Analytics, the three most dangerous states for wildfires based on the number of housing units at high to extreme risk of wildfire damage are:
1.California 2.Texas 3.Colorado (Howard, 2022)
After finding this ranking of most dangerous states due to wildfires, I switched over to a data set produced by the Center for Disease Control regarding annual deaths by diseases and by state. Then, organized the data by creating a table of California, Texas and Colorado and their corresponding sums of annual deaths from respiratory disease (chronic lower and other) as well as influenza and pneumonia from 2019–2021. My results clearly show throughout all diseases and years, that California has the highest rankings across the board, with Texas in second and Colorado in third.
Summary of data
1. California: Deaths Across All Three Diseases
2019: 21,725
2020: 22,255
2021: 18,473
2. Texas: Deaths Across All Three Diseases
2019: 17,098
2020: 17,323
2021: 15,676
3. Colorado: Deaths Across All Three Diseases
2019: 3,295
2020: 3,324
2021: 2,888
Overall you can clearly see that the number of deaths per year from respiratory related disease matches the previous ranking of most dangerous states due to wildfires. California has substantially more (about 18,000 more deaths) each year than Colorado due to respiratory diseases. Although this data is compelling in this context, we do have to remember to take into consideration population. California has a much higher population than both Texas and Colorado and this has a large impact on the numbers presented. These results, although impacted by population and other forces, still demonstrates a strong relationship between respiratory related deaths and wildfires, and I believe that there is a correlation between these two variables.
