Could Wildfires Have Long-Term Health Effects?

Along with the rest of the world, Sarah B. Henderson, PhD, watched as massive wildfires blazed across California, Oregon, and Washington. “What happened on the West Coast this year wasn’t unexpected,” says Henderson, an international expert on wildfires. “Not that it was expected this year per se, but we just have to expect extreme wildfire seasons like that now.” Henderson, a senior scientist at the Environmental Health Services in British Columbia, has studied the health effects of wildfires for almost 20 years in places that include Australia, Southeast Asia, South America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Now, she says, huge wildfires have become commonplace enough in the age of climate change that scientists can begin researching the long-term health effects, similar to how they’ve studied the toll of air pollution or urban smog over the past decades. To read the full story.