Wildfire smoke contributes to thousands of deaths each year in the U.S.

Wildfire smoke covered huge swaths of the U.S. in 2023, including places like New York City, where it has historically been uncommon. New research shows the health costs of breathing in wildfire smoke can be high.Wildfire smoke covered huge swaths of the U.S. in 2023, including places like New York City, where it has historically been uncommon. New research shows the health costs of breathing in wildfire smoke can be high.

"It's a call to action," she says—outlining the real, and significant, human stakes of failing to rein in further human-caused climate change.on people's death certificates. But research has shown that tiny particles present in smoke worsen many different health problems. These particles penetrate deep into people's lungs and can cross into the bloodstream or even into the brain.

Physician and researcher Juan Aguilera, now at the University of Texas School of Public Health in El Paso, has studied the impacts of air pollution on his patients' health. He had just moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2020 when the smoke descended."The 2020 wildfires brought a lot of perspective to people living in the Bay Area," he says.

Aguilera compares the risk of inhaling wildfire smoke to smoking cigarettes."Being in a wildfire-prone area, it seems something equivalent to smoking like one pack a day, or 10 packs a week," says Aguilera.Despite the growing understanding of the health risks from wildfire smoke, the costs have not been factored into most policy decisions, says Susan Anenberg, a public health and pollution expert at George Washington University.

In years like 2020, some northern California counties were exposed to double their normal pollution load for the year. In conditions like those, the total number of deaths increased by almost 6%. But even small increases in smoke exposure averaged out over the year, push mortality up."Our findings are consistent with a host of recent work suggesting there is no safe level of air pollution exposure," the study authors write.

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