<
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/08/wildfire-smoke-unknown-health-impacts>
"A thousand kilometres from the infernos gorging on northern Ontario’s boreal
forests, Erin O’Connor watched the sky above Canada’s biggest city turn an
“almost post-apocalyptic” orange as it filled with light-scattering particles
of soot and ash. Stepping outside the halls of Toronto General hospital, where
air filters were keeping patients safe from the worst of the fumes, she was
struck by a smell so strong it felt like standing by a campfire.
“It really hit you in the face as soon as you walked outside,” said O’Connor,
who runs University Health Network’s emergency department and saw a rise in
patients presenting with allergies and shortness of breath. “As the days
progressed, it was like that everywhere. It seemed even inside you could smell
that burning.”
Far more than the flames that have engulfed southern Europe and North America
in recent weeks, it is the smoke that dominates the astonishing death toll from
combusting nature. Thick with toxic gases that inflame the airways and tiny
particulates that breach the lungs and ride the bloodstream to hit every organ
in the body, fumes from landscape fires kill 1.5 million people each year, a
study in the
Lancet found in 2024 – more than floods, flames, storms and heat
combined.
So damaging are the lung-scarring effects of charred plant matter that people
far from the fires may still perish. The plumes spewed by wildfires in Canada
in 2023 caused 82,000 early deaths, a study in Nature found last year, with
unfavourable winds pushing a third of the mortality burden into the US and
another quarter into Europe. About 10% of the UK’s fine particulate pollution
(PM2.5) comes from biomass burned abroad, researchers found in March.
Yet while scientists agree the health burden of wildfire smoke is jaw
droppingly large, they are only beginning to untangle the complex links between
exposure and mortality. The open research questions are growing more pressing
as climate breakdown makes fire weather more severe. What if hotter infernos
cause pollution to peak at even more extreme levels? What if bad air lasts
several days or weeks? What if a severe episode hits before a person has fully
recovered from the last bout of smoke?"
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
