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John Balmes, a professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and an expert on the health effects of pollution who was not involved in the research, said the new study included not only deaths but reported infections, which makes it particularly interesting. . “It’s one thing for air pollution to increase the severity of coronavirus infection, it’s another thing for it to increase reported cases,” he said.
After decades of tightening air quality regulations, the air in many American cities is cleaner than it has been in 50 years. Loretta Mickley, an atmospheric chemist at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and one of the authors of the paper, said rising wildfire smoke in the West threatens to undo these advances.
As the planet warms, droughts intensify, and the West becomes drier, wildfires start earlier, grow, spread faster and reach higher altitudes. In California alone, a record 2.5 million acres burned during the 2020 wildfire season, 20 times what was burned the previous year.
“We’re really talking about climate change,” said Francesca Dominici, a biostatistician at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health and the paper’s senior author. “Hopefully this provides additional evidence of why it’s important that we act together in tackling climate change.”
Wildfire smoke can contribute up to half of PM 2.5 in parts of the western United States. It is not yet clear whether wildfire smoke is more or less toxic than smoke from diesel combustion or power plants.
Dr. Dominici noted that the analysis did not include individual patient data or consider other factors such as mask requirements.
Researchers are currently investigating whether fine particulate matter can spread the coronavirus.
Dr. Dominici said the research did not bode well for this year as wildfires started early and the pandemic was still raging in the United States, with a Delta variant that tends to be more contagious. “I think wildfires will have the same, if not worse, effect on Covid-19 cases and deaths among the unvaccinated,” he added.
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