Record carbon emissions from wildfires: "Don't breathe that air"

BarcelonaBehind the flames of a forest fire there is not only the devastation of the land like that which has been suffered for days in different parts of the Iberian Peninsula, but also smoke clouds that can have health consequences and are even more toxic than other sources of pollution, such as traffic, according to a study by researchers at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) revealed this summer.. While firefighting efforts are progressing favorably in Castile and León, aided by weather conditions, the fire continues to threaten Galicia's oldest forest and has already turned the peak of Peña Trevinca, which covers some 25,000 protected hectares, black. The wave of fires hitting the Iberian Peninsula this August has pushed the total annual carbon emissions from forest fires in the country to record levels, the highest since at least 2003. Breathing smoke from a fire is common among the elderly, pregnant women, children, and people with underlying respiratory illnesses, such as asthma, and heart conditions. However, anyone with prolonged exposure to this pollutant may experience symptoms such as coughing, difficulty breathing, burning eyes, throat irritation, and runny nose. In severe cases, they may experience wheezing, chest pain, headaches, fatigue, and even a rapid heartbeat. For this reason, this Wednesday the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery (SEPAR) recommended avoiding smoke exposure, avoiding outdoor physical activity, and maintaining good hydration to protect the respiratory tract even after the fires are extinguished, as suspended particles remain in the air.

The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) published data on Tuesday indicating that this increase in emissions has occurred suddenly and in a matter of days. At the beginning of August, accumulated carbon emissions from forest fires in Spain were below the seasonal average, despite the fact that several active outbreaks were already present. The spread of the flames, with increasingly larger and larger fires producing enormous amounts of smoke and fine PM2.5 particles, has caused pollution records to skyrocket in just seven to eight days. "It has caused a severe deterioration in air quality locally and in more remote areas of the Iberian Peninsula and parts of France," explains CAMS Senior Scientist Mark Parrington. Aerial images captured with the Copernicus Sentinel system and released by the European Space Agency (EASA) also demonstrate this impact.

"We are observing that the fires in Spain and Portugal can impact as far west as France, as far as the Brittany region," agrees Anna Alari, the principal investigator of the ISGlobal study published in The Lancet Planetary Health who has studied the effects of smoke from forest fires in Europe on mortality. "At the moment, there is no health alert there because the authorities see that this pollution remains at a very high altitude," he adds. The distance at which smoke from a fire can affect depends largely on weather conditions, although Alari emphasizes that "scientific literature has indicated that it can travel up to more than a thousand kilometers from the fire, and in the United States, they have seen that fires in California impact air quality in Colorado."

"You shouldn't breathe that air," warns Alari about the effects of the smoke currently being emitted by the major fires in the state. Air pollution data indicate that PM2.5 particle levels have reached 67 micrograms per cubic meter in some areas of Zamora, exceeding 180 micrograms in municipalities of León. "This is a lot. In epidemiology, fine particles are considered to have an impact starting at 1 microgram. Until now, we haven't looked at what level there is an impact on health; any level can have a health consequence," he warns.

535 deaths each year in Europe

To put these figures into context, Alari points out that European recommendations for fine particle pollution levels generally range between 10 and 15 micrograms, well below the amounts being recorded these days. This ties in with another of the main conclusions of the study led by the researcher: mortality associated with smoke from forest fires has, until now, been underestimated by 93%, and this pollution could be responsible for an average of 535 deaths per year in Europe.

The reason, the specialist explains, is that until now, health risk estimates had been made without distinguishing the source of the pollution or by including only a few European countries. While his team worked with data from the Early-Adapt project, which includes daily mortality records in 654 contiguous regions. However, exposure to smoke from wildfires is very rare compared to how often we breathe fine particles associated with other sources of pollution. Therefore, although smoke from wildfires is more toxic, "the effects of traffic and energy production are even greater, with more attributable deaths, because they are more frequent," Alari explains.

However, air pollution levels from wildfire smoke and other factors are evolving differently, even in the opposite direction. "In Europe, air pollution from traffic is decreasing thanks to public policies, while fires are increasing. Climate change is making them more frequent and more severe," explains Alari, who warns that in the coming years, this will be a type of pollution to which we will be exposed. For the researcher, the impact of pollution from these large fires associated with climate change "must be a public health priority; it's urgent." However, she regrets that "very important countries like the United States have denialist positions regarding climate change," and the withdrawal of funding from laboratories dedicated to researching its effects has forced many to close.