How Badly Does Smoke From Wildfires Affect Human Health?

"And with wildfires becoming more common in recent years, you might find yourself wondering what the health effects of breathing in wildfire smoke might be. A paper published this week in Nature sought to better understand smoke's connection to mortality - and the results led the authors to contend that "the health impacts of climate-driven wildfire smoke could be among the most important and costly consequences of a warming climate in the U.S.""

"Stanford University's Marshall Burke, one of the paper's authors, told NPR that smoke inhalation could contribute to other chronic conditions that put people's health at risk. "[W]hat we know from decades of research, and what we find again in this study, is that breathing dirty air just exacerbates a range of things that make us sick."Inhaling smoke is also not the only way fires can put people's health at risk."

In 2023, parts of the New York metropolitan area and other regions experienced skies colored and suffused with smoke transported from distant wildfires. Wildfire emissions are increasing and are expected to become more widespread as climate conditions change. Smoke exposure raises mortality rates not only in the year of exposure but also in subsequent years. Breathing wildfire smoke exacerbates chronic conditions and contributes to long-term health risks. Fires also produce toxic aftereffects beyond inhalation exposure, adding additional hazards for affected communities and complicating recovery.

Read at InsideHook