Smoke Exposure & Health Equity

Climate change is forcing difficult and unfair choices upon us.  Looking at wildfires in California provides an example of just how challenging some of the tradeoffs in question may be.  As discussed further in this research review co-authored by guest contributor Rachel Dent, the scale and intensity of wildfires are threatening vulnerable populations in California, across the West, and beyond.  As we know, such wildfires are greatly worsened by climate change and decades of fire suppression.  Yet a key solution – prescribed burning – also threatens California’s air quality, and is likely to disproportionately affect air quality and health for people in the Central Valley, which already has some of the worst air quality in the country.

One of the policy recommendations from the research review points to the need for more housing, particularly affordable housing, in proximity to denser urban and suburban areas.  Many Latinx families in the West are moving into areas of high wildfire risk, with studies showing that Latinos are twice as likely to live in the most threatened areas compared to the general US population.  The seemingly unstoppable increase in housing in wildland-urban interfaces is driven in large part by the unaffordability of housing close to job centers.  By focusing housing construction in developed areas and ensuring abundant supplies of affordable housing in such areas, there is less danger of human-started fires, more access to firefighting resources, and less smoke exposure from prescribed burning. 

More science and more community input are key as we move forward.  Research can help steer decisions around these tradeoffs so that actions address community concerns around health and equity.  We need to understand what is at stake in order to be able to make informed decisions that effectively prioritize health equity.