Wildfire Smoke Is Laced With Toxic Chemicals – Here’s How They Got There
When you breathe in smoke from a wildfire, you’re probably inhaling more toxic chemicals than you realize.
Pollution from power plants and vehicles, pesticides, fertilizers and chemicals in waste can all make their way into trees and plants. When those trees and plants burn, chemicals are released along with health-harming particulate matter in the smoke, gas and ash.
Millions of people have been breathing that smoky air this year as the western U.S. experiences another extreme fire year. More than 4 million acres had burned in the West by Oct. 1, California had nearly doubled its previous record for acreage burned, and several weeks of wildfire risk were still ahead.
As an engineer and scientist who studies air pollution, I have been looking into how those chemicals compound the health...