The new normal is bringing about changes to health care, Dr. Patel said. More health systems are sending out air quality alerts to vulnerable patients. In the small community hospital where she works, “every child that comes in with wheezing or asthma, I talk to them about how air pollution is getting worse because of wildfires and climate change,” she said.
“I teach them how to look up air quality, and say they should ask for an air purifier,” Dr. Patel added. She also cautions that children should not participate in cleanup after a wildfire.
Scientists are still trying to understand the full range of wildfire smoke’s health effects. One big question is how much of what researchers know about vehicle exhaust and other forms of air pollution apply to wildfire smoke, said Mark R. Miller, a researcher at the Center for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Edinburgh who led a recent global survey of climate change, air pollution and wildfires.
For example, exhaust particles “are so small that when we breathe them in, they go deep down into our lungs and are actually small enough that they can pass from our lungs into our blood,” he said. “And once they’re in our blood, they can be carried around our body and start to build up.”
That means air pollution affects our entire body, he said. “It has effects on people who have diabetes, has effects on the liver and the kidney, it has effects on the brain, on pregnancy,” he said. What’s still not clear is whether pollution from wildfires has all of those same effects. “But it’s likely,” he said.
