Burning to reduce fuels: the benefits and risks of a public health protection strategy

Johnston, Fay H.

doi:10.5694/mja2.50751

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…Like all health and economic modelling studies, this analysis has some inherent assumptions, uncertainties, and limitations that are well recognised and have been discussed elsewhere. 36 Our aim was to use consistent and accepted methods to compare the relative health costs of the two types of landscape fires. This required using some additional approaches, which have additional specific limitations: the use of administrative fire data (and its inherent data errors) to identify individual fire events, the association of fire type days with identified LFSaffected days, and the estimation of a relationship between LFSattributable health costs and fire activity measured by area burned.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smoke health costs and the calculus for wildfires fuel management: a modelling study

Borchers-Arriagada

Bowman

Price

et al. 2021

The Lancet Planetary Health

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Background Smoke from uncontrolled wildfires and deliberately set prescribed burns has the potential to produce substantial population exposure to fine particulate matter (PM 2•5 ). We aimed to estimate historical health costs attributable to smoke-related PM₂ • ₅ from all landscape fires combined, and the relative contributions from wildfires and prescribed burns, in New South Wales, Australia.Methods We quantified PM 2•5 from all landscape fire smoke (LFS) and estimated the attributable health burden and daily health costs between July 1, 2000, and June 30, 2020, for all of New South Wales and by smaller geographical regions. We combined these results with a spatial database of landscape fires to estimate the relative total and per hectare health costs attributable to PM 2•5 from wildfire smoke (WFS) and prescribed burning smoke (PBS).

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Smoke health costs and the calculus for wildfires fuel management: a modelling study

Borchers-Arriagada

Bowman

Price

et al. 2021

The Lancet Planetary Health

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Section: Forest Management Impacts On Pm 25 Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Multiple studies have acknowledged the benefits of fuel reduction via prescribed burning in mitigating wildfire risk but have also highlighted the dangers of introducing additional treatment-related smoke 15,[36][37][38][39][40][41] . Such studies have called for increased quantification of air-quality and health trade-offs in forest and fire management decision-making [39][40][41] . Despite these calls, to date, few studies have examined whether forest management-in the form of prescribed burning and mechanical thinning-can reduce overall population exposure to wildfire smoke and whether such actions are associated with reduced adverse human health risks.…”

Section: Forest Management Impacts On Pm 25 Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the smoke-related public health trade-offs of forest management

Schollaert,

Jung,

Wilkins

et al. 2023

Nat Sustain

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Prescribed burning can mitigate extreme wildfire risk and reduce total smoke emissions. Yet prescribed burns’ emissions may also contribute to smoke exposures in nearby communities. Incorporating public health considerations into forest management planning efforts may help reduce prescribed burn-related exposure impacts. We present a methodological framework linking landscape ecology, air-quality modelling and health impact assessment to quantify the air-quality and health impacts of specific management strategies. We apply this framework to six forest management scenarios proposed for a landscape in the Central Sierra, California. We find that moderate amounts of prescribed burning can decrease wildfire-specific PM2.5 exposures and reduce asthma-related health impacts in the surrounding region; however, the magnitude of that benefit levels off under scenarios with additional prescribed burning because of the added treatment-related smoke burdens. This framework can be applied to other fire-prone landscapes to incorporate public health considerations into forest management planning.

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“…Prescribed burns to reduce fuels are the most common method employed to mitigate the hazard of uncontrolled bushfires. 7 As with all landscape fires, prescribed burns generate smoke containing a range of pollutants. Particulate matter is the predominant pollutant within the smoke that is most strongly and consistently linked with adverse health effects.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating portable air cleaner effectiveness in residential settings to reduce exposures to biomass smoke resulting from prescribed burns

Wheeler¹,

Reisen²,

Roulston³

et al. 2024

Public Health Res Pract.

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During extreme air pollution events, such as landscape fires, public health agencies often recommend that vulnerable individuals use portable high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) cleaners to reduce their exposure to smoke • We quantified the impact of HEPA cleaners in residential settings during smoke events due to prescribed burns • HEPA cleaners substantially improved indoor air quality when used in appropriately sized rooms

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Burning to reduce fuels: the benefits and risks of a public health protection strategy

Cited by 8 publications

References 29 publications

Smoke health costs and the calculus for wildfires fuel management: a modelling study

Smoke health costs and the calculus for wildfires fuel management: a modelling study

Quantifying the smoke-related public health trade-offs of forest management

Evaluating portable air cleaner effectiveness in residential settings to reduce exposures to biomass smoke resulting from prescribed burns

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