The Far-Reaching Consequences of Wildfire Smoke Plumes

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By Kate Wheeling, Eos/AGU. 

Excerpt: Smoke from wildfires burning in the western United States carries harmful pollutants across the country. ...O’Dell et al. looked at smoke exposure across seasons and regions in the United States between 2006 and 2018. The team combined observation-based estimates of smoke-related PM2.5 and gas phase hazardous air pollutants, or HAPs, with data on asthma hospital admissions and emergency department visits to determine the impacts of both acute and chronic smoke exposure. The authors found that smoke caused between 1,300 and 5,900 asthma-related emergency department visits per year, and these were more likely to occur in the spring and summer. Chronic exposure to PM2.5 from smoke was linked to as many as 6,300 deaths per year, the study found. Although most large wildfires originated in the western United States, nearly 75% of the emergency department visits and hospital admissions due to smoke occurred in nonwestern states.…

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