United States: Recent reports suggested that higher levels of air pollution occurring from wildfires have an association with a rise in hospitalizations for asthma, along with a few cases more added in hospitalization for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) coming from the surrounding areas when analyzed the days of eight-thousand people.
Fine particulate matter creates problems
As Benjamin D. Horne, PhD, of the Intermountain, said, a short-term rise in fine particulate matter (PM2.5) coming from wildfire smoke has been causing greater problems related to health problems such as asthma and COPD.
However, he also noted that the short-term increase effect of PM2.5 on the rise of hospitalizations for asthma and COPD has yet to be properly studied.
Horne said, “Our primary reason for studying the association of air pollution in the summer/fall wildfire season separately from the winter is that the drought conditions in the western United States from 2012-2022 resulted in more wildfires and increasingly large wildfires across the west,” as medscape.com reported.
“In part, this provided a chance to measure an increase of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution from wildfires and also to track what happened to their health when people were exposed to the PM2.5 from wildfire,” he added.
Exceeding levels of PM2.5 in winters
The experts explain that during 2020-2022, the PM2.5 generated during the wildfire season is exceedingly greater than measured during the winters for the first time.
Moreover, as the study was conducted in Utah, PM2.5 levels increased in winter due to a combination of factors such as concentrated PM2.5 emitting from cars and industry, as well as weather phenomenon in play, which is known as temperature inversion, Horne mentioned.
According to Horne, “Past studies in the region were conducted with the assumption that the winter inversion was the primary source of pollution-related health risks, and public and healthcare guidance for health was based on avoiding winter air pollution,” as medscape.com reported.
“it may be that the smoke from wildfires requires people to also anticipate how to avoid exposure to PM2.5 during the summer,” he added.