Studies only suggest "the plausible biological story that exposure to air pollution worsens immune function," he said. ', What Germany Can Teach the US About Quitting Coal, As Wildfire Smoke Blots Out the Sun in Northern California, Many Ask: ‘Where Are the Birds?’. Current Wildfires - Montana: description: Interactive map of wildfires currently active in Montana. Wildfire smoke had choked the mountain valleys of western Montana for nearly two months when a team of university researchers landed in Seeley Lake in the fall of 2017. "We were just—we couldn't believe it," she said, noting that the lag time was months, rather than days or weeks. Close to 380,000 acres burned in … Does wood smoke harm my health even more than urban pollution? The Montana DNRC's Southwestern Land Office is monitoring eight new fire starts in western Montana, especially in Powell County. One was led by Landguth, who reviewed a decade's worth of data on PM 2.5 from wildfires in Montana and hospitalizations and urgent-care clinic visits for influenza. Learn More. Weekly Newsletter Maui Has Begun the Process of Managed Retreat. But so far, no research specifically ties wildfire smoke exposure to increased infection from the coronavirus or severity of symptoms, scientists told InsideClimate News. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its coronavirus website this summer to say that people with Covid-19 are at increased risk from wildfire smoke, Landguth pointed out. Will Today’s Conflagrations Do the Same? Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, High Country News and Outside magazine and aired on NPR. Some of those calls are from the 109 people who participated in the Seeley Lake study two years ago. They showed that lung function in the 100 Montanans who participated declined the year after the fires and stayed compromised the year after that, said lead researcher, Christopher T. Migliaccio, whose work at the University of Montana focuses on how environmental factors affect respiratory function and immunity, with an emphasis on wildfire smoke exposures. "When it comes to how we might expect wildfire smoke to exacerbate Covid-19 risks, we don't know yet, since we are just now experiencing our 2020 wildfire season with this new emerging infectious disease," said Erin Landguth, an associate professor in the Center for Population Health Research at the University of Montana. Past studies of wildfire smoke have focused on acute cardiopulmonary health effects that happen within days or weeks of exposure. Landguth pointed out that groups considered "sensitive" to air pollution make up about 30 percent of the U.S. population. Small Nuclear Reactors Would Provide Carbon-Free Energy, but Would They Be Safe? The Bridger Foothills Fire will go down as one of the most destructive wild fires in Montana history. You can reach her at judy.fahys@insideclimatenews.org. Students and faculty left  their labs behind, headed to the small community and launched a study on how the relentless wildfire smoke was affecting the health of the people breathing it. "We need more evidence," she said, "about the efficacy of different specific interventions that could protect people from smoke.". And even though that link has been well established in research, the most prominent study so far linking air pollution with the coronavirus has taken heat, Pope noted. Will I get sicker from the coronavirus because I inhaled so much wildfire smoke for so long? They also are sometimes small enough to pass into the bloodstream. But "there has not been the smoking gun study that totally proves that true.". Show Legend. In a press … How PM 2.5 makes people sick has been the subject of thousands of studies over decades. See current wildfires and wildfire perimeters in Montana on the Fire, Weather & Avalanche Center Wildfire Map. "It's really important in thinking about the overall cost," he said, "putting a sort of a back of the envelope magnitude, on how large these hidden costs could be.". Credit: Amanda Windischmann. More than a dozen studies have emerged from around the world in recent weeks on how air pollution affects Covid-19, but many urgent questions remain. Solid answers about the connection between air pollution and Covid-19 are probably two years away, said C. Arden Pope, a researcher at Brigham Young University who pioneered air pollution epidemiology. Interactive real-time wildfire and forest fire map for Montana. Her team, however, was shocked to find delayed effects, as well. Previously, she spent an academic year as a Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She serves on the board of the Society of Environmental Journalists. Montana Disaster and Emergency Services These microscopic particles of soot, which come from fossil fuel combustion as well as from burning forests and grasslands, burrow into the sensitive lining of the lungs, triggering heart and lung damage. Sign up for InsideClimate News Weekly In it, researchers detailed how the health care costs associated with PM 2.5 from the 2019-20 Australian megafires was nearly $1.4 billion (in U.S. dollars), with 3,230 hospital admissions for cardiovascular and respiratory disorders and 429 premature deaths attributed to the smoke. "Wildfire smoke can irritate your lungs, cause inflammation, affect your immune system and make you more prone to lung infections, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19," the CDC page says.

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