What is air pollution? Learn how greenhouse gases, smog, and toxic pollutants affect climate change, and human health.
The chronic exposure to longer-lasting, more frequent wildfires could have serious effects on our health—from our lungs to our kidneys, liver, brain, and heart.
“People were once exposed once or twice in a lifetime,” says Keith Bein, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis. “Now it’s happening every summer and for longer.” Of particular concern, she says, is particulate matter 2.5 microns in diameter—also referred to as PM 2.5. Those small particles, and ones even smaller, are capable of penetrating deep into a person’s lungs. Henderson says the body responds by releasing the same immune cells it would deploy to attack a virus. Unlike a virus, however, particulate matter isn’t broken down by that immune response and results in long-lasting inflammation.
With those diseases, it can be harder to get much-needed oxygen to the rest of the body. As oxygen enters the lungs it heads to the alveoli—tiny air sacs that—and passes into the blood in the capillaries. When the body is fighting off a threat, those air sacs can fill up with mucus so that air cannot pass through, Christenson says. This also makes it more difficult for the body to eliminate the carbon dioxide, which can also cause respiratory distress.
Tarik Benmarhia, an environmental health scientist from the University of California, San Diego, notes that the same populations of people who were more vulnerable to diseases like COVID-19—those with low incomes, pre existing conditions, and poor access to health care—may also be vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires.
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