For weeks, millions of Californians were smothered by smoke from wildfires. Many worry about long-term health impacts.
Even if the number of new cases remains the same, there could be more serious health complications because of the way air pollution inflames the lungs and “just doesn’t allow the immune system to respond correctly to this kind of infection,” said Tarik Benmarhnia, a professor of epidemiology at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography and School of Medicine. “I really hope I’m wrong, but what we may expect to see in the next few weeks is an increase in the fatality rate from COVID-19.
The few studies that have been completed have usually involved groups like wildland firefighters. There is research suggesting they have increased risk of heart disease and lung cancer, but that is mostly extrapolated from what is already known about exposure to PM2.5 from other sources of pollution, such as traffic.One of the most relevant studies followed not humans, but baby rhesus macaque monkeys at a primate research center on the UC Davis campus who were exposed to high levels of PM2.
Schmidt’s project now includes about 400 women who were pregnant during or shortly after wildfires in Northern California over the past four years. She plans to recruit additional participants this year who may have faced even higher, cumulative smoke exposure due to the recent fires.
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