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Earth United States

Wildfire Smoke is Unraveling Decades of Air Quality Gains, Exposing Millions of Americans To Extreme Pollution Levels (stanford.edu) 58

Wildfire smoke now exposes millions of Americans each year to dangerous levels of fine particulate matter, lofting enough soot across parts of the West in recent years to erase much of the air quality gains made over the last two decades. From a report: Those are among the findings of a new Stanford University study published Sept. 22 in Environmental Science & Technology that focuses on a type of particle pollution known as PM2.5, which can lodge deep in our lungs and even get into our bloodstream. Using statistical modeling and artificial intelligence techniques, the researchers estimated concentrations of PM2.5 specifically from wildfire smoke in sharp enough detail to reveal variations within individual counties and individual smoke events from coast to coast from 2006 to 2020.

"We found that people are being exposed to more days with wildfire smoke and more extreme days with high levels of fine particulate matter from smoke," said lead study author Marissa Childs, who worked on the research as a PhD student in Stanford's Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). Unlike other major pollutant sources, wildfire smoke is considered an 'eexceptional event' under the Clean Air Act, she explained, "which means an increasing portion of the particulate matter that people are exposed to is unregulated."

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Wildfire Smoke is Unraveling Decades of Air Quality Gains, Exposing Millions of Americans To Extreme Pollution Levels

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  • by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:24PM (#62908629) Homepage Journal

    > an increasing portion of the particulate matter that people are exposed to is unregulated

    Are these serious people?

    • by KermodeBear ( 738243 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:29PM (#62908651) Homepage

      We need to not only fine the fires, but tax them, too, to make sure they're paying their fair share. Also we need at least another thousand pages of regulations.

    • I'm sure they're serious about gaining and keeping their sinecure.
    • > an increasing portion of the particulate matter that people are exposed to is unregulated

      Are these serious people?

      Unfortunately, both serious people and unserious people are being exposed.

    • I think a significant part of the problem is that the research was done at Stanford, near the epicenter of the most unregulated forest fires.

    • by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @05:12PM (#62909177)

      Are these serious people?

      No, these people are not serious people. Stanford University is where we find people like Mark Z. Jacobson, people that suggest we don't need nuclear fission power to lower CO2 emissions and sustain our economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Serious people take a close look at Jacobson's paper and see how impractical his proposal really is, not pay him to be a professor. I have little doubt that Jacobson was involved in this study on air quality since this is the kind of thing the Wikipedia article says he studied as a PhD candidate.

  • by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:27PM (#62908645)

    The last big fires in Northern California, the air was so bad I was doubled over coughing unable to do anything but struggle for air. After a few minutes of that I was at the point where 911 was becoming a serious thought but then realized I couldn't have managed to dial.

    Same day I ordered quality air purifiers for every room in the house. Worth every penny. I also bought air quality meters, too, so I can be sure the purifiers were doing something more than placebo effect.

    I show my out of state friends the outdoors pictures I took at noon where everything is dark and the sky is orange, to give them an idea how bad it was that year.

    • They're not the most fun to breathe in, but a properly fitted N95 is actually useful against wildfire smoke, too. I wouldn't want to wear one all day in the house, air purifiers are great for that, but they're helpful if you have to go outside.

      Beauty of covid is that no one will even give you a sideways look for wearing one now.

    • by dbialac ( 320955 )
      That protects you inside, but then there's another question: doesn't particle soot reflect sunlight, and therefore reduce planetary heating, at least in that area?
      • by dbialac ( 320955 )
        And to further clarify, some are talking about putting up devices in space to reflect sunlight. Maybe we need to settle for a shorter term project we have the technology for involving non-toxic soot.
    • DIY option: https://www.seattletimes.com/n... [seattletimes.com]

      Might be paywalled. Basically you build a box one wall of which is a box fan and the rest of which are MERV 13 furnace filters.

      N95s help for real when going outdoors in it. A friend in Australia escalated to a dual-cartridge HEPA respirator when it got so bad she could not see across the street.

      • N95s help for real when going outdoors in it. A friend in Australia escalated to a dual-cartridge HEPA respirator when it got so bad she could not see across the street.

        Just ye olde harbor freight carbon N95 mask is a massive upgrade. They sell them in a painter's kit now too that also comes with P95 dust filters, which is nice. I have one set up each way so I don't have change filters.

    • by GFS666 ( 6452674 )

      The last big fires in Northern California, the air was so bad I was doubled over coughing unable to do anything but struggle for air. After a few minutes of that I was at the point where 911 was becoming a serious thought but then realized I couldn't have managed to dial.

      I drove through the air from the fires up in Northern California (was last year). I DID call 911 when I found I have having major difficulties breathing. After checking me out and finding my 02 level was okay, they recommended I have the car AC on full, which recirculates the interior car air and removes particulates from the air inside the car and does not refresh the air using air outside of the vehicle. I have since found out that I am very sensitive to air particulates.

      Same day I ordered quality air purifiers for every room in the house. Worth every penny. I also bought air quality meters, too, so I can be sure the purifiers were doing something more than placebo effect.

      I bought air purifiers from Austin

  • So, where are they going to be posting this?

    Wildfires contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer
  • Wild fire smoke is bad and all but try breathing the smoke that comes from a significantly sized neighborhood burning down near you (happened to me in California in 2017). I shudder to think of the damage done to me by a week of breathing in the toxic mix of burnt insulation and plastic.

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday September 23, 2022 @02:41PM (#62908695) Homepage Journal

    I've been huffing basically all of the major fires in the Northwest and I can tell you it's quite unpleasant. We've recently had some smoke down from Oregon, too. This year I put in a duct fan with a carbon filter to push air into the house when it's smoky, or when the neighbors are doing their dryer sheet stink laundry, and it's made a big improvement.

  • You know what else is unraveling air quality gains?

    The hordes of homeless in my town running generators 24x7 and cooking over campfires burning whatever garbage they come across. Not to mention their dilapidated RVs leaking oil and other auto fluids and their feces and urine running into the river.

    • You know what else is unraveling air quality gains?

      The hordes of homeless in my town running generators 24x7 and cooking over campfires burning whatever garbage they come across. Not to mention their dilapidated RVs leaking oil and other auto fluids and their feces and urine running into the river.

      Yeah, give them jobs so they can pollute like us normal people.

      • Yeah, give them jobs so they can pollute like us normal people.

        Yes, because there's no difference. Using your gaming PC for a few hours is the same as pouring motor oil in the creek.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Don't forget the exploding propane tanks.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • As the regulations around polluting are peeled back until they're completely ineffectual, the smoke from forest fires will eventually just be a line item on the master list of environmental dangers, not particular significant in context.

  • by steveha ( 103154 ) on Friday September 23, 2022 @03:37PM (#62908929) Homepage

    My wife and I bought a house a couple years ago and have lived in it for over a year now. We had it remodeled before we moved in, and one of the things we upgraded was the ventilation.

    Before, it had a natural gas furnace, and a weird hacked switch in the coat closet that could turn on just the air blower without running heat. (Presumably for use when the house was warm... no air conditioning.)

    Now it has a heat pump, and a "heat recovery ventilator" (HRV), and a pre-filter before the HRV.

    The heat pump accepts a large disposable filter, and supports MERV [wikipedia.org] 13 filters. It circulates the air multiple times through the filter during the day.

    The HRV dumps stale indoor air from the house to the outside, and brings in an equal volume of fresh air from the outside. It runs stale and fresh air past each other in a heat exchanger, so if you have been spending energy to heat or cool the house, you recover some of that benefit.

    The pre-filter is a simple box that holds a 20" x 10" filter on a diagonal inside the box. One 6" duct in, one 6" duct out, one filter in the middle. It supports MERV 13 filters also.

    The effect of all the above is that the air in our house is better than we ever had before in any home. I have been surprised by how much I have noticed the difference and how much I like it.

    It's forest fire season right now, and the area where I live has had a lot of wood smoke in the air from a fire northeast of us. I have both an outdoor and an indoor air quality sensor. When the outdoor has been measuring unhealthy air quality, the indoor consistently has shown healthy air. For example, when the outdoor sensor showed 199, the indoor was 31. For most days the outdoor has been varying from the 60's to the 170's and indoor has been 11 or lower. The absolute worst I have seen was about 270 outdoors (just for part of one day) and it went to 61 indoors. (Anything below 50 is healthy air; 61 is very mild concern. Over 200 is pretty bad... when it hit 270 the smoke was visible like heavy fog.)

    So, if you ever need to have any work done on your home's HVAC system, maybe take that opportunity to put in a few filters.

    P.S. I also got a HEPA filter, but it made a lot of noise, and I turned it off and removed the HEPA filter cartridge. So that's money I wish I hadn't spent. MERV 13 can take out smoke particles and in practice seems to be doing a great job for use; the HEPA wasn't necessary.

    • Before, it had a natural gas furnace, and a weird hacked switch in the coat closet that could turn on just the air blower without running heat. (Presumably for use when the house was warm... no air conditioning.)

      It is called a "summer switch" and keeps the fan running to balance out the temperature between rooms (assuming you have both inlets and outlets in them). My very old house has gas heat and central AC and I still find keeping the fan running all the time reduces variability throughout the house.

      • by steveha ( 103154 )

        It is called a "summer switch" and keeps the fan running to balance out the temperature between rooms (assuming you have both inlets and outlets in them).

        Our home had one single, giant air intake on the ground floor in the middle of the house. Then a small air outlet in each room... all in the ceilings for the ground level, all in the floor for the upper level. The giant air intake was just a grille over a hole cut into the wall by the garage, and the furnace was on the other side of that wall. There's a

      • by steveha ( 103154 )

        When the contractors remodeled the house, the first thing they did was pull down the drywall of the soffit and expose the ducts and wiring.

        They found that the ducts had been installed by putting screws through the sheet metal and into structural wood of the house. Best practice is to not have little holes where conditioned air can leak away, so they put some kind of sealer (maybe simply epoxy glue) on each of the screw points. The ducts themselves were fine and they left them in place, but the HVAC guys i

        • They found that the ducts had been installed by putting screws through the sheet metal and into structural wood of the house. My return air inlets are built like this. Flat pieces of sheet metal making what is effectively a duct out of the space between studs. It is common in older homes, and since they are only return ducts it does not really matter if they are well sealed. My outlet ducts are all well sealed though. I've even used duct tape for what it is actually intended for.

          • by steveha ( 103154 )

            I've even used duct tape for what it is actually intended for.

            I wish I could moderate this... +1 Funny. ^_^ Thanks.

    • Unfortunately a 20x10 filter is not very big, most houses I've lived in have used 20x20 filters. That would make a lot less noise... You don't need HEPA for smoke, any electrostatic filter will handle that. What you really need to clean up intake air though is a carbon filter. It reduces the really nasty stuff like dioxin that electrostatic and hepa filters don't help with at all.

      • by steveha ( 103154 )

        Unfortunately a 20x10 filter is not very big

        Well, so far it seems to be working okay for us. I hope you understand that this is to filter a single 6" duct that brings fresh air from the outside. The one for the heat pump, which filters and re-filters the home air as it heats/cools, is 30" x 32".

        You don't need HEPA for smoke, any electrostatic filter will handle that.

        I have read that the modern thinking is that the average idiot homeowner won't do the maintenance on an electrostatic filter, so they have go

  • For years, environmental activist groups have been saying forest fires are natural and forests should be allowed to burn. Of course the smoke is bad, but a small price to pay for natural regeneration, and besides, the timber companies will be able to harvest less trees which fits into the environmental agenda. Most timber companies practice sustainable forestry, which means they plant trees the year following tree cutting. Many of these companies manage greenhouses to provide trees for renewal. Frankly t
  • Wildfire, and particularly the damage it wreaks, is caused by the confluence of 3 factors:

    a. Overpopulation
    b. Irresponsible people
    c. Stupid zoning policies.

    California is the leading state for all 3 of those.

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