Sad woman feeling negative emotions alone at home
More of us are learning about wildfires. Unfortunately, we’re getting firsthand lessons in the destruction that these natural disasters can do as they move through American communities and regions of the country.
And until recent years, most of us didn’t know how far wildfire smoke can move. That is, until we saw smoke from Western and Canadian wildfires in areas like the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest. We saw firsthand the haziness, the smell, and the overall “weather” of massive wildfire smoke, impacting us right where we live.
With that in mind, it’s worth digging into some of the lesser-known effects of wildfires on a particular area.
What Wildfires Do
We all know that out-of-control configurations are hazardous.
They kill and they destroy property. Property loss estimates from recent wildfires regionally measure in the billions of dollars, and we know that many people’s homes and businesses are lost in fires. A lot of this has to do with their proximity to other buildings, the extent to which humans can manage the wildfires themselves, and various types of remediation and emergency handling.
What is less known to people is the insidious health risks of wildfires that happen over time.
You might not think anything of it if you encounter wildfire smoke and start coughing. You might think that it’s OK, because wildfire smoke is totally natural, and wood has been around for millennia.
However, science is telling us a much more detailed story about what happens when smoke from a wood-burning fire gets into a human‘s lungs.
Ultrafine particles and VOCs
First, wildfires generate quite a bit of what’s called PM 2.5.
These are small particles measuring around 2.5 µm that can get embedded in the lungs and cause or exacerbate respiratory health issues over time.
These small particles can be bad for your health. They can contribute to conditions like:
- Asthma
- COPD
- Poor respiration
Few people realize the extent to which these ultrafine microbes can affect us. But now there is new science talking about this connection – and we’re seeing more wildfire smoke in our communities. So people have started to associate PM2.5 with wildfires, even though this type of pollution is more familiar in things like vehicle exhaust and industrial pollution.
But that’s not the only chemical element of wildfires that seems counterintuitive to us, where the same kinds of toxic substances given off by vehicles and factory equipment can be released just by burning wood.
The VOC Challenge
Volatile Organic Chemicals or VOCs are a particular class of chemical elements that have some human health risks.
These toxins lurk in dirty or polluted air, whether that’s as a byproduct of gasoline, or some other fuel. And yes, wood-burning can create these contaminants as well.
Let’s take a specific one to illustrate the nature of this problem and how it affects communities.
Benzene in the Air
Benzene is a carcinogen, and sounds like something that’s in manufactured chemicals.
It’s a gasoline byproduct. It’s a byproduct of industrial processes.
It also gets created naturally as a result of wood burning. How can this be?
This resource from a chemistry forum shows how small amounts of benzene can get created in a natural wood fire. Experts argue, though, that it is quickly dispersed or otherwise mitigated by the chemical process. This is part of the explanation by a poster who seems to have some authority in this type of science:
“When you heat up organic matter, what you’re doing is dumping a large amount of thermal energy into the molecules composing that matter, and after a certain point …the large chains that compose organic matter begin to break apart. If this happens in the presence of oxygen, the material will also begin to oxidize, and the process is called combustion. If it happens in the absence of oxygen, the material will gasify.”
The explanation continues:
“As the temperature gets hotter and hotter, a soup of big organic macromolecules is formed. It is in this macromolecular soup that you can find benzene and its many, many, many cousins. (These molecules are too complex to have names, and are so large that they can’t be characterized exactly – instead, chemists can only statistically describe the molecules, using techniques like nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), mass spectrometers (MBMS), or infrared spectrometers (FTIR).) This process of solid matter turning into volatile gases is called pyrolysis.”
So many of those who look closely at the science would think that the amount of benzene thrown off is going to be negligible.
But we have evidence of other kinds of benzene contamination that are more difficult to fix.
Benzene and the Santa Rosa Water Fiasco
An article in Chemical and Engineering News talks about a problem in areas of northern California in 2018.
A massive wildfire destroyed over 8000 structures, and 44 people were killed.
In addition, scientists found high levels of benzene in the local Santa Rosa water.
These high benzene levels persisted for months, and it cost the city $43 million. Workers had to replace hundreds of service lines, and give residents filters to get benzene down to safe levels around one part per billion.
Writer Elizabeth Wilson describes the reaction this way: “After benzene was first detected, the city embarked on a program of testing, research and consultation with water scientists and engineers.”
It turned out that the fire’s intensity had melted plastic water pipes, and other plastic components in the water system. Apparently, the plastic water pipes also soaked up the contaminant in areas that weren’t melted by the fire.
Now the question remains: how much of this contamination was from the burning of plastic?
It may be that the wildfire itself doesn’t generate enormous amounts of non-dissipating benzene.
Still, we also have to be researching the VOCs that are emitted by natural woodburning processes, because the fact that wood-burning is organic doesn’t mean it can’t be hazardous.
Handling this Range of Toxins
So when you talk about heavy contaminants of fire, what do you do to protect yourself and your family?
First you can use this available fire map to check if you’re in an affected area where wildfire risks persist. You can then use an air monitor to find out what’s in your air. Then it’s time to clean up!
Inside your home, you can use air purifiers to clean your indoor air, and make it more breathable and livable inside. Then you can stay indoors to protect yourself when high levels occur.
There are two major elements to this – a HEPA filter will help with the PM 2.5 materials, and an activated carbon filter will help with volatile organic chemicals. So it’s good to have both.
What models are good for fighting the impact of wildfires?
First, there are the Airpura V714 and Airpura V414 models, from a great manufacturer, which have the HEPA filter you need to take a bite out of PM 2.5. Other good choices include the Allerair Pro 5 HD Vocarb, and the Austin Healthmate Plus. Right now, you can get $50 off of an Airpura model with the code Fire50 on our site!
US Air Purifiers LLC can help you to find the models that make the best sense for your home. It can be a complex process, with ACH (air changes per hour) and other metrics, as well as consideration of various new technologies for cleaning your indoor air. Get confident with a modern air purifier in your home.