<
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/10/smoke-from-canadas-wildfires-killed-nine-year-old-carter-vigh-and-82000-others-around-the-world>
"Amber Vigh had taken the usual precautions when bringing her nine-year-old
son, Carter, to summer camp in July 2023. There were no fires near their home
in British Columbia, Canada. Her air quality app showed low levels of
pollution. She could not smell any smoke.
Carter, a music-loving Lego enthusiast who had asthma, brought along his
smiling shark tooth-patterned emergency kit that held an inhaler, allergy pill
and EpiPen. When smoke did roll in from the north, Vigh took him indoors.
But at home that evening, Carter began to cough uncontrollably. Vigh and her
husband, James, followed the doctors’ checklist – emergency inhaler, drink of
water, steroid inhaler – and gave him a bath to cool down. Then, “all of a
sudden, he started coughing again like crazy”, said Vigh.
Alarmed, she drove Carter to the local hospital and called ahead so medics
would be waiting. “This isn’t good,” Carter told his dad while being carried to
the truck.
“Right then, we both knew this wasn’t just a normal asthma attack,” said Vigh,
a teaching assistant. “Never thinking in a million years it was going to result
the way that it did.”
Carter died in hospital that day from what the coroner called an asthma attack
aggravated by wildfire smoke. And though most people in his family’s shoes will
not know it, his death was far from the only one made more likely by the fumes.
Tiny toxic particles spewed by Canadian wildfires killed 82,000 people in 2023,
according to a study published in
Nature on Wednesday. The long tendrils of
smoke choked towns not just in Canada and the US, but also across the Atlantic.
The pollution was responsible for 22,000 early deaths in Europe alone.
The findings add to a growing body of evidence that suggests smoke from
wildfires ranks among the greatest threats to human health. In December, a
study in the
Lancet medical journal attributed 1.53 million deaths each year
to exposure to air pollution from wildfires."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
