The public health burden of wildland fires-in terms of the number and economic value of deaths and illnesses-is considerable.

BackgroundIn 2012, Colorado experienced one of its worst wildfire seasons of the past decade. The goal of this study was to investigate the relationship of local PM2.5 levels, modeled using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with Chemistry, with emergency department visits and acute hospitalizations for respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes during the 2012 Colorado wildfires.MethodsConditional logistic regression was used to assess the relationship between both continuous and categorical PM2.5 and emergency department visits during the wildfire period, from June 5th to July 6th 2012.ResultsFor respiratory outcomes, we observed positive relationships between lag 0 PM2.5 and asthma/wheeze (1 h max OR 1.01, 95 % CI (1.00, 1.01) per 10 μg/m3; 24 h mean OR 1.04 95 % CI (1.02, 1.06) per 5 μg/m3), and COPD (1 h max OR 1.01 95 % CI (1.00, 1.02) per 10 μg/m3; 24 h mean OR 1.05 95 % CI (1.02, 1.08) per 5 μg/m3). These associations were also positive for 2-day and 3-day moving average lag periods. When PM2.5 was modeled as a categorical variable, bronchitis also showed elevated effect estimates over the referent groups for lag 0 24 h average concentration. Cardiovascular results were consistent with no association.ConclusionsWe observed positive associations between PM2.5 from wildfire and respiratory diseases, supporting evidence from previous research that wildfire PM2.5 is an important source for adverse respiratory health outcomes.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12940-016-0146-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

These analyses suggest the importance of sufficient water consumption during early pregnancy, above and beyond it being a marker of higher diet quality. Additional analyses are warranted to understand the biological mechanism for this association. Birth Defects Research 109:193-202, 2017. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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