Health effects of wildfire smoke in children and public health tools: a narrative review

Abstract

Wildfire smoke is an increasing environmental health threat to which children are particularly vulnerable, for both physiologic and behavioral reasons. To address the need for improved public health messaging this review summarizes current knowledge and knowledge gaps in the health effects of wildfire smoke in children, as well as tools for public health response aimed at children, including consideration of low-cost sensor data, respirators, and exposures in school environments. There is an established literature of health effects in children from components of ambient air pollution, which are also present in wildfire smoke, and an emerging literature on the effects of wildfire smoke, particularly for respiratory outcomes. Low-cost particulate sensors demonstrate the spatial variability of pollution, including wildfire smoke, where children live and play. Surgical masks and respirators can provide limited protection for children during wildfire events, with expected decreases of roughly 20% and 80% for surgical masks and N95 respirators, respectively. Schools should improve filtration to reduce exposure of our nation's children to smoke during wildfire events. The evidence base described may help clinical and public health authorities provide accurate information to families to improve their decision making.

Development and Application of a United States wide correction for PM<sub>2.5</sub> data collected with the PurpleAir sensor

“…Air sensors are potentially of the greatest use during wildland fire smoke impacted times (Holm et al, 2020;Durkin et al, 2020;Holder et al, 2020;Delp and Singer, 2020). A recent paper developed a smoke specific correction for PM2.5 concentrations from PurpleAir sensors based on smoke impacts from multiple types of fires in the U.S. (Holder et al, 2020).…”

Development and application of a United States-wide correction for PM<sub>2.5</sub> data collected with the PurpleAir sensor

“…A best practice is to locate air sensors alongside regulatory air monitors to understand their local performance and to develop corrections for each individual sensor (Jiao et al, 2016;Johnson et al, 2018;Zusman et al, 2020). For optical particulate matter (PM) sensors, correction procedures are often needed due to both the changing optical properties of aerosols associated with both their physical and chemical characteristics (Levy Zamora et al, 2019;Tryner et al, 2019) and the influence of meteorological conditions including temperature and relative humidity (RH) (Jayaratne et al, 2018;Zheng et al, 2018). In addition, some air sensors have out-of-the box differences and low precision between sensors of the same model (Feenstra et al, 2019;Feinberg et al, 2018).…”

Climate Change and Human Well-Being in the 2020s: Lessons From 2020

“…34 A systematic review protocol set out plans to identify health impacts of wildfires on firefighters and ways to reduce their risks. 35 A review of health effects in children called for enhanced preparedness, prioritizing low-cost smoke sensors, masks, and air filtration, 36 while a review of Australia's Black Summer proposed monitoring preparedness indicators, including household smoke alarms, response time for fires, and numbers of firefighting personnel and aircraft. 14 A new comprehensive review of wildfire causality and health effects provides a useful summary of research to date.…”