Health Effects of the 2003 Southern California Wildfires on Children

Abstract

Rationale:In late October 2003, Southern California wildfires burned more than 3,000 km 2 . The wildfires produced heavy smoke that affected several communities participating in the University of Southern California Children's Health Study (CHS). Objectives: To study the acute effects of fire smoke on the health of CHS participants. Methods: A questionnaire was used to assess smoke exposure and occurrence of symptoms among CHS high-school students (n ϭ 873; age, 17-18 yr) and elementary-school children (n ϭ 5,551; age, 6-7 yr), in a total of 16 communities. Estimates of particulate matter (PM 10 ) concentrations during the 5 d with the highest fire activity were used to characterize community smoke level. Main Results: All symptoms (nose, eyes, and throat irritations; cough; bronchitis; cold; wheezing; asthma attacks), medication usage, and physician visits were associated with individually reported exposure differences within communities. Risks increased monotonically with the number of reported smoky days. For most outcomes, reporting rates between communities were also associated with the firerelated PM 10 levels. Associations tended to be strongest among those without asthma. Individuals with asthma were more likely to take preventive action, such as wearing masks or staying indoors during the fire. Conclusions: Exposure to wildfire smoke was associated with increased eye and respiratory symptoms, medication use, and physician visits.

Canadian Forest Fires and the Effects of Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution on Hospitalizations among the Elderly

“…Thus we defined 6-8 July 2002 as our haze period, when air pollution was also at its highest and compared it to a control non-haze period, corresponding to the same days of the preceding week (29,30 June and 1 July 2002). We chose not to include the same days in the following week as part of the control because of potential persisting effects in the post-haze period [19] The same days of the week were used in this fashion to minimize potential time-varying confounding effects, such as might be expected for weekday versus weekend.…”

“…The impact of this increased pollution on the health of local populations has been well documented [9,11,13,17,29,30,[85][86][87]. For example, Duclos et al showed a 40% and 30% increase in number of local emergency room visits for asthma and COPD respectively, during 1987 forest fires in northern California [13].…”

“…Most studies addressing health impacts of short-term exposures are related to anthropogenically generated PM, which are commonly associated with automobile combustion and industrial practices. There has been a limited but growing body of literature addressing the impact of shorter-term exposure to smoke from forest and bush fires (referred to as wildfires in this paper) [8,9,11,17,[29][30][31][32][33]. The majority of these studies have examined the impact on nearby local communities of exposures to wildfire aerosols.…”

“…Associated health effects include increased emergency department visits and hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), bronchitis, asthma and chest pain [7,13,15,[34][35][36][37]. For example, the San Diego wildfire in October 2003 caused the daily 24 h average PM 2.5 concentrations to exceed 150 µg/m 3 , and was associated with significant increases in hospital room emergency room visits for asthma, respiratory problems, eye irritation, and smoke inhalation [38], and increased eye and respiratory symptoms, medication use and physician visits in children living in the San Diego area [30]. In Canada, Moore et al estimated that forest fire smoke in 2003 was associated with excess respiratory complaints in Kelowna (Kelowna, BC, Canada) area residents [31].…”

Observations and impacts of transported Canadian wildfire smoke on ozone and aerosol air quality in the Maryland region on June 9–12, 2015

“…Wildfire emissions themselves are harmful to human health, but are exacerbated within urban pollution (Kunzli et al, 2006) and are difficult to quantify (McKeen et al, 2002). Singh et al (2012) outlined some of the current shortcomings in the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model associated with wildfire smoke.…”