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Don’t Underestimate the Impact of Wildfire

The specific effects of wildfire pollution on the skin are less clear, in part because each wildfire is unique depending on what it burns (building materials? trees or bushes?), its intensity, and its temperature. Dr. The most toxic compounds are formed at the highest temperatures, Valacchi said.

(This also applies to cigarettes. There’s no healthy way to smoke, but the worst thing is, the ash won’t fall off if you smoke it too fast. “You have a very high combustion temperature and it creates very, very, very carcinogenic compounds,” he said.)

Dr. Eczema and wildfire research researchers chose to focus on this disease because it causes affected people’s skin barrier to break down, which means they’ll be more likely to react to smoke, Wei said. About 7 percent of adults and 15 percent of children in the United States have eczema.But it is not yet clear how this reflects on the rest of the population because it is unknown whether the incidence and severity of skin diseases is as intense as pollution or whether there is a pollution threshold where the skin barrier fails completely. said. (Unlike long-term exposure to air pollution from cars and industry, wildfires are often brief but dangerously intense exposures to air, said Mr. Fadadu.)

In the study, visits to the dermatology clinic for itching increased significantly in about two weeks of the fire in November, and 89 percent of adult patients had no previous diagnosis. (About 50 percent of patients with eczema were previously undiagnosed during the same time period in previous years.) Researchers do not know whether these people have subclinical eczema and whether the fire “unmasks”. These were normal people with symptoms of eczema from the fire.”

In both cases, Dr. John, an associate professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania and chair of the Climate Change and Environmental Affairs Specialist Resource Group of the American Academy of Dermatology. Misha Rosenbach said that the effect of forest fires on the skin is much greater. more than we know now. He praised the eczema study, but said he probably underestimated the effects of wildfires—most people with rashes tend to go to emergency rooms or primary care doctors, not dermatology clinics, the study’s dataset.

Also, the study took place in San Francisco, 175 miles from the source of the fire. “We spent many days on the East Coast where the air quality was the worst ever due to the West Coast fires,” he said.