(TNS) β Last year, as the Tubbs Fire scorched its way across Napa and Sonoma counties, environmental researchers at the University of California, Davis, fielded questions about the health impact of chronic exposure to smoke from a wildfire that torched trees and urban structures alike.
UCDβs Kent Pinkerton and Rebecca Schmidt and other researchers had the same questions. They sought studies on urban wildfires and found no answers.
βEveryone had concerns about their health and what was in the smoke,β said Schmidt, who studies how environmental exposures influence child development. βWe just didnβt have any answers to those questions, and when we looked and searched to see what was out there, we really found there wasnβt much.β
Yet studies on air pollution do offer up clues to what happens when the human body is under assault from microscopic particles in the air, Pinkerton said. The UCD professor has spent decades studying the effects of air pollution on lung inflammation and disease.
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Source: DRJ New feed
