Citation

Maji KJ, Li Z, Vaidyanathan A, Hu Y, Stowell JD, Milando C, Wellenius G, Kinney PL, Russell AG, Odman MT. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2024; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, American Chemical Society)

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.4c00890

PMID

38943591

Abstract

Smoke from wildfires poses a substantial threat to health in communities near and far. To mitigate the extent and potential damage of wildfires, prescribed burning techniques are commonly employed as land management tools; however, they introduce their own smoke-related risks. This study investigates the impact of prescribed fires on daily average PM(2.5) and maximum daily 8-h averaged O(3) (MDA8-O(3)) concentrations and estimates premature deaths associated with short-term exposure to prescribed fire PM(2.5) and MDA8-O(3) in Georgia and surrounding areas of the Southeastern US from 2015 to 2020. Our findings indicate that over the study domain, prescribed fire contributes to average daily PM(2.5) by 0.94 ± 1.45 μg/m(3) (mean ± standard deviation), accounting for 14.0% of year-round ambient PM(2.5). Higher average daily contributions were predicted during the extensive burning season (January-April): 1.43 ± 1.97 μg/m(3) (20.0% of ambient PM(2.5)). Additionally, prescribed burning is also responsible for an annual average increase of 0.36 ± 0.61 ppb in MDA8-O(3) (approximately 0.8% of ambient MDA8-O(3)) and 1.3% (0.62 ± 0.88 ppb) during the extensive burning season. We estimate that short-term exposure to prescribed fire PM(2.5) and MDA8-O(3) could have caused 2665 (95% confidence interval (CI): 2249-3080) and 233 (95% CI: 148-317) excess deaths, respectively. These results suggest that smoke from prescribed burns increases the mortality. However, refraining from such burns may escalate the risk of wildfires; therefore, the trade-offs between the health impacts of wildfires and prescribed fires, including morbidity, need to be taken into consideration in future studies.

Language: en

Keywords

air pollution; chemical transport model; premature deaths; prescribed burn