TY - JOUR PY - 2021// TI - Estimated mortality and morbidity attributable to smoke plumes in the United States: not just a western US problem JO - Geohealth A1 - O'Dell, Katelyn A1 - Bilsback, Kelsey A1 - Ford, Bonne A1 - Martenies, Sheena E. A1 - Magzamen, Sheryl A1 - Fischer, Emily V. A1 - Pierce, Jeffrey R. SP - e2021GH000457 EP - e2021GH000457 VL - 5 IS - 9 N2 - 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.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 2471-1403 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2021GH000457 ID - ref1 ER -