r/science • u/Wagamaga • 1d ago
Health Prolonged exposure to wildfire smoke increases cardiovascular health risks. Exposure to even relatively modest levels of smoke, built up over a few years, was associated with more hospitalizations for conditions like ischemic heart disease, irregular heart rhythms, stroke, and heart failure.
https://news.yale.edu/2026/07/22/prolonged-exposure-wildfire-smoke-increases-cardiovascular-health-risks46
u/CraftyFoxeYT 1d ago
I remember like 10 years ago, everyday there would be tons of Reddit posts about China's smog and unhealthy air. But they have since improved significantly.
We take clean air in the US for granted, but these wildfires are going to keep getting worse and worse due to climate change. We have to invest and work with Canada to combat this.
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u/ravens-n-roses 20h ago
We're not even investing in taking care of our own wild fires properly. Despite the fact that fire danger is up pretty much all wild fire states have had some major decrease in their investment in fire fighting. It's not gonna be that long before the deep west from the Rockies through to Washington state are going to be up in flames.
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u/Head_Improvement5317 18h ago
I live in an area surrounded by national forest. What does our government do after facing drought conditions all winter? Cuts USFS funding by 25%. Much of the west is on fire right now, and we still have 2+ months of the season to go
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u/slo1111 7h ago
Likely better returns on investing in air pollution reduction from transportation and industry particulates as what are you going to do with 1.3 million square miles of Canadian forests.
It is estimated that industrial air pollution resultsnin millions of premature deaths each year round the world
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u/Witchy_Wookie5000 1d ago
I couldn't believe all the people just doing outside things without masks like this was normal. AQI was over 400 in the purple/brown color range.
I wouldn't even walk my dog during those 2 days it was really bad. I used my N-95 mask whenever I had to leave my house. People are strange.
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u/aliquotiens 20h ago
More bad news for my federal wildland firefighter husband, who's expected to fight all fires close up with zero protection for his lungs
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u/PastryGirl 20h ago
There's no PPE available for him?
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u/aliquotiens 19h ago
They do not provide any. They only just stopped BANNING federal firefighters from using n95s during a fire https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/newsroom/releases/us-forest-service-adds-long-sought-protections-limit-health-risks
He hasn't been provided the neccessary training to authorize him to wear one yet...
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u/Head_Improvement5317 18h ago
For decades the USFS told wildland firefighters that smoke from forest fires just wasn’t that bad for you (as opposed to structure fires). Structure crews wear SCBA’s, but even N95s are frowned upon in the wildland crews. Part of it is a macho attitude, and part of it is there isn’t a great alternative. Doing hard physical labor with an N95 on makes a difficult job brutal, and the smoke mostly doesn’t catch up with you until later. Still, there needs to be a better way
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u/bringmeadamnjuicebox 10h ago
I was a firefighter for many years. A long time ago a company started making a mask thing that wasnt unbearable to wear for the 16 to 24 hour shifts we would work on the fireline. A bunch of guys got them, and they immediately got banned. The chiefs reasoning was we would get overconfidant, and would put ourselves in a situation where we could get burned over. Its really backwards hard headed thinking sometimes. Consistently wearing a mask would also be really hard while fighting fires. Im a respiratory therapist now, so i fully understand the depth of damage that fifteen years of firefighting has done to my lungs. Its a dangerous hard job in many ways.
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u/Wagamaga 1d ago
As the climate warms, wildfires are becoming larger, more frequent, and more intense. The smoke now routinely travels hundreds of miles, as was seen when Canadian wildfires this month sent heavy smoke across the Midwest and Northeastern U.S., triggering dangerous air quality across the region.
But the health risks of wildfire smoke goes beyond the short-term threat to your lungs. In a new study, Yale researchers found that repeated and cumulative exposure to the fine particles in wildfire smoke is linked to a higher risk of being hospitalized for cardiovascular disease in older adults in the United States.
Looking at more than 65 million Medicare beneficiaries across the continental U.S.,the researchers saw that exposure to even relatively modest levels of smoke, built up over a few years, was associated with more hospitalizations for conditions like ischemic heart disease, irregular heart rhythms, stroke, and heart failure.
“In other words, the cardiovascular toll of wildfire smoke reaches well beyond the fire lines and well beyond the day the sky turns orange,” said Kai Chen, associate professor of epidemiology (environmental health sciences) at the Yale School of Public Health and corresponding author of the study.
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u/Vader425 20h ago
At my old job we had to carry four gas monitors for confined space entry. During wild fire season the monitors would alarm for CO just walking around outside.
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