When the catastrophic fires of Los Angeles broke out, John Volcker suspected firefighters and residents breathed the toxic air of houses, buildings and cars on fire, but it was not clear how the public was confronted. Thus, the environmental health teacher at Colorado State University designed a plan to obtain answers.
Volcken has sent 10 air pollution detectors to Los Angeles to measure the quantities of heavy metals, benzene and other chemicals Released by the flames, which burned more than 16,000 houses, companies and other structuresBy making one of the most expensive natural disasters in the country.
“These disaster events continue to occur. They release pollution in the environment and in the surrounding community,” said Volcken, who shared its results with local air regulators. “We have this kind of traumatic experience, and then we find ourselves: well, what have we just breathed?”
Scientists and public health officials have long followed pollutants that cause SMOG, acid rains and other environmental health risks and have shared them with the local air quality index. But the surveillance system lacks hundreds of harmful chemicals released in urban fires, and Los Angeles fires led to a renewed thrust so that the regulators of states and federals make more because climate change leads to the frequency of these natural disasters.
However, it is questionable to know if the Trump administration will act, however. Last month, the administrator of the environmental protection agency Lee Zeldin announced what he described as the “Greater deregulator” action in historythat criticism warns will lead to a Rollback of environmental health regulations.
Although the values of the air quality index are a good starting point to find out what is in the air, they do not provide a complete image of pollutants, especially during disasters, says Yifang ZhuProfessor of Environmental Health Sciences at the UCLA. In fact, the AQI could be in a healthy range, “but you could always be exposed to higher air toxins of fires,” she added.
In February, nearly a dozen California legislators called on EPA to create a working group from local and federal authorities to better monitor what is in the air and inform the public. The inhabitants are “uncertain of the real risks which they face and confused by contradictory reports on security of security to breathe air outside, which can lead families not to take adequate protective measures”, wrote the legislators a letter to James Payne, who was then the acting administrator of the EPA. The EPA press office refused to comment on an email at Kff Health News.
The legislators also presented bills at the Congress and the California Legislative Assembly to fill the gap. A measure by the American representative Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) And the American senator Jeff Merkley (D-ear.) Would arrange the EPA to allocate subsidies to local air pollution agencies to communicate the risks of forest smoke, including the deployment of air monitors. Meanwhile, a bill of the member of the Assembly of the Lisa Calderon Democratic State would create a “Wild Fire Research and Education Fund“To study the impacts on the health of forest fire smoke, in particular on firefighters and residents affected by fires.
THE Air quality management district of the southern coastA regional atmospheric pollution control agency operates around 35 air surveillance stations over almost 11,000 square miles from the Los Angeles region to measure pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide.
During fires, the agency, which is responsible for the air quality of 16.8 million residents, relied on its network of stations to monitor five common pollutants, including PM2.5, the fine particles that make up smoke and can travel deep inside the body. After fires, the AQMD of the South Coast deployed two mobile surveillance vans to assess air quality in cleaning areas and extended surveillance in the neighborhood during the elimination of debris, said Jason Low, head of the agency’s monitoring and analysis division.
Local officials also received the data collected by Volcken’s devices, which arrived on the spot four days after the breakdown of fires. The monitors – the size of a television remote control and housed in a plastic blanket the size of a bread – were placed in air surveillance stations around the fire perimeters, as well as on other sites, including in West Los Angeles and Santa Clarita. The devices, called aerials, have monitored dozens of real -time air contaminants and have collected precise chemical measurements of smoke composition.
The researchers replaced the sensors each week, sending the filters to a laboratory which analyzed them for measures of volatile organic compounds such as benzene, lead and black carbon, as well as other carcinogens. Volcken devices provided public health officials for data for a month at the start of cleaning. Hope is that the information provided can help guide future health policies in fire -prone areas.
“There is not a single device that can measure everything in real time,” said Low. “Thus, we must count on different tools for each type of different surveillance goal.”
Ascent, A national surveillance network Funded by the National Science Foundation, recorded major changes after fires. A instructor, about 11 miles south of the fire Eaton in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains, detected 40 times the normal quantity of chlorine in the air and 110 times the typical lead quantity in the days that followed the fires. It was clear that the chemical spikes came from urban forest smoke, which is more dangerous than what would be emitted when trees and bushes burn in rural areas, said Richard Flagan, the co-researcher of the network site in Los Angeles.
“In the end, the goal is to make data known in real time, both for the public, but also for people who make other aspects of research,” said Flagan, adding that chemical measures are essential for epidemiologists who develop health statistics or carry out long -term studies on the impact of atmospheric pollution on people’s health.
Small low -cost sensors could fill the gaps as government networks age or fail to adequately capture the full situation of what is in the air. Such sensors can identify pollution hot spots and improve forest smoke warnings, according to a March 2024 US government’s responsibility office report.
Although the devices has become smaller and more precise in the last decade, some pollutants require an analysis with X -ray analyzes and other costly high level equipment, said J. Alfredo Gómez, director of the GAO natural resources team. And Gómez warned that data quality can vary depending on what devices are watching.
“The low -cost sensors are doing a good work of measuring the PM2.5 but not such a good job for some of these other air toxins, where they still have to do more work,” said Gómez.
The UCLA ZHU said that the emerging technology of portable pollution monitors means that residents – not just the government and scientists – may be able to install equipment in their backgrounds and widen the image of what is happening in the air at the most local level.
“If fires should be worse in the future, it could be a valid investment to have a certain capacity to capture specific types of pollutants that are not systematically measured by government stations,” said Zhu.
This article was produced by Kff Health Newspublishing California Healthlinean editorially independent service of California Health Care Foundation.