Here in Australia, while we may not like them, we are, at least, used to wildfires. They are part of our environment. But people in the northern hemisphere are finding it hard to come to terms with the massive fires blazing across Europe and North America. And while an advancing wildfire is a terrifying sight as it consumes everything in its path, scientists are warning that it's the smoke from wildfires that can also be a serious threat to health.
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TRANSCRIPT
Concern is growing for the impact raging wildfires will have on health.
The World Health Organisation says that total area burned by wildfires in Europe has risen by 57 per cent in just four years.
Here in Australia, studies published by the CSIRO show that the annual area burned across Australian forests has grown by roughly 48,000 hectares per year over recent decades.
The catastrophic 2019–20 Black Summer season remains the highest peak for intense forest fires, burning as much as 19 million hectares of land nationally.
That's not far off the total area of England, Scotland and Wales.
But covering a wider area than the flames is the smoke.
The World Health organisation warns smoke can travel long distances, worsening heart and respiratory conditions and affecting mental health, particularly among older people, children, pregnant women and those with chronic diseases.
Dr Fatemeh Moheimani is a Senior Lecturer in Cellular Genetics, at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK
“These tiny, tiny particles, when we inhale them, they can go inside through our nose, go inside our breathing tubes, and they can go deep. The smaller and the tinier they are, the deeper they can go and penetrate inside the breathing tubes and into the lung. And if they're very, very tiny, they may even pass those defence barrier that our body has in order to defend against these, external insults.”
The WHO is recommending the use of facemasks with people most at risk needing targeted support.
Dr Richard Pope is an atmospheric scientist from Leeds University who studies the pollutants found in the environment.
“We have these air pollutants such as ozone, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. So these are very tiny little aerosols in the atmosphere and when you've got large urban areas, kind of highly populated and density, these pollutants can then get kind of breathed in by the local population and can cause, quite severe kind of short term episodic instances and then kind of risk of pollutants and health impacts.”
He says the fires themselves aren't just getting more intense, but the pollution they create now hangs like a pall around neighbouring countries hundreds of miles away.
It's the very thing that US President Donald Trump has complained about, blaming Canada for the smoke that has drifted south across the border.
Most of the biggest particles in wildfire smoke fall close to where a blaze is burning, while the smallest particles — the ones that scientists say do the most damage — travel the farthest.
Dr Pope again.
“Every fire season you're getting massive burns, massive smoke plumes. I mean, if we look at Canada, for instance, we've had these massive fires in British Columbia and we've seen these really big smoke plumes coming across New York. And these are becoming, you know, annually, not just kind of like every five, ten years, episodic events. It's really frequent intense smoke haze and horrible pollutants. So the long term effects can affect things like your respiratory illnesses and function, your cardiovascular impacts. And this can turn to quite, you know, have substantial impacts on more mortality and morbidity. So, you know, from fires alone, you can get tens of thousands of premature deaths per year from exposure to these events.”
On a global scale, wildfire smoke particles cause 677,745 deaths annually, with almost 39 per cent of them children under age 5, according to a 2021 study that combined observations, studies on how the body responds to the particles and computer models to calculate the toll.
The WHO says climate change means we need to prepare for more intense wildfires and countries must start assessing the risk to their citizens and developing emergency plans and advice to protect people.
Dr Pope says it is not a problem that can be ignored.
“So short term impacts from fires can be really detrimental to human health especially if they're becoming more frequent. But generally things like people with asthma that will kind of trigger or exacerbate the problem. it can also cause coughing, wheezing, and you see a large increase in people going to hospital and hospital admissions.”
Australia's Black Summer bushfires caused an estimated 417 additional excess deaths and impacted roughly 80 per cent of the Australian population.
The event prompted thousands of emergency cardiovascular and respiratory hospitalisations, with smoke-related health costs estimated at AU$1.95 billion.
Twenty-two organisations including the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine signed a joint statement in 2019 warning that climate change is worsening extreme weather events and elevated air pollution from bushfires will become more frequent.
