@article{ref1,
title="Estimated mortality and morbidity attributable to smoke plumes in the United States: not just a western US problem",
journal="Geohealth",
year="2021",
author="O'Dell, Katelyn and Bilsback, Kelsey and Ford, Bonne and Martenies, Sheena E. and Magzamen, Sheryl and Fischer, Emily V. and Pierce, Jeffrey R.",
volume="5",
number="9",
pages="e2021GH000457-e2021GH000457",
abstract="As anthropogenic emissions continue to decline and emissions from landscape (wild, prescribed, and agricultural) fires increase across the coming century, the relative importance of landscape-fire smoke on air quality and health in the United States (US) will increase. Landscape fires are a large source of fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)), which has known negative impacts on human health. The seasonal and spatial distribution, particle composition, and co-emitted species in landscape-fire emissions are different from anthropogenic sources of PM(2.5). The implications of landscape-fire emissions on the sub-national temporal and spatial distribution of health events and the relative health importance of specific pollutants within smoke are not well understood. We use a health impact assessment with observation-based smoke PM(2.5) to determine the sub-national distribution of mortality and the sub-national and sub-annual distribution of asthma morbidity attributable to US smoke PM(2.5) from 2006 to 2018. We estimate disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) for PM(2.5) and 18 gas-phase hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) in smoke. Although the majority of large landscape fires occur in the western US, we find the majority of mortality (74%) and asthma morbidity (on average 75% across 2006-2018) attributable to smoke PM(2.5) occurs outside the West, due to higher population density in the East. Across the US, smoke-attributable asthma morbidity predominantly occurs in spring and summer. The number of DALYs associated with smoke PM(2.5) is approximately three orders of magnitude higher than DALYs associated with gas-phase smoke HAPs. Our results indicate awareness and mitigation of landscape-fire smoke exposure is important across the US.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="2471-1403",
doi="10.1029/2021GH000457",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2021GH000457"
}