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Understanding and responding to the health and climate emergency
Published in Stephen Battersby, Clay's Handbook of Environmental Health, 2023
Emma L. Gillingham, Helen L. Macintyre, Raquel Duarte-Davidson, Revati Phalkey
Wildfires can result in large economic losses, not only due to destruction of property but also due to healthcare costs. Economic costs of mortality due to PM2.5 exposure of the Saddleworth Moor fire in the UK were estimated at £21.1m, broken down into human costs (£13.9m), lost output (£7.0m), medical costs (£0.07m) and others (£0.15m) [44]. A study of wildfire events in USA during 2008–2012 estimated that there were 5,200–8,500 respiratory hospital admissions, 1,500–2,500 cardiovascular hospital admissions and 1,500–2,500 deaths from short-term exposure to PM2.5 concentrations [48]. The economic value of hospital admissions and deaths associated with short-term exposure were estimated to be US$11–$20bn/year, and the cost of long-term PM2.5-exposure-related premature deaths was estimated to US$76-$130bn/year [48]. During 2018, more than 8,500 wildfires burned in California and resulted in 104 fatalities, making it the deadliest and most destructive year on record (until the wildfire season of 2020). The amount of damage caused by the fires was estimated at US$148.5bn, ~1.5% of California’s annual GDP [49]. Approximately 31.5% of the cost of the wildfires was related to health: US$32.2bn was associated with 3,652 air pollution deaths, US$210m related to medical expenses and US$130m in work time lost [49].
Area sources
Published in Abhishek Tiwary, Ian Williams, Air Pollution, 2018
Wildfires (also known as forest fires) can be as potent source of air pollution as conventional traffic, despite having natural origins. For example, the wildfires blazing across Northern California in autumn 2017 produced more than 10,000 tonnes of PM2.5, which is approximately the PM2.5 amount released by on-road vehicular sources in the state in the entire 2014. Wildfires can have a significant impact on local air quality, visibility, and human health. Emissions from forest fires can travel large distances and produce harmful effects far away from the fire location. Typical forest fire emissions include: particulate matter, carbon monoxide, atmospheric mercury, ozone-forming chemicals and volatile organic compounds. This exacerbates the air pollution levels in developed countries to comparable levels in other more pollution parts of the world. Especially, high increase in fine particulate matter due to wildfire smoke is associated with increased risks on acute respiratory admissions.
Outdoor Emissions
Published in William J. Rea, Kalpana D. Patel, Reversibility of Chronic Disease and Hypersensitivity, Volume 4, 2017
William J. Rea, Kalpana D. Patel
In addition to polluting the air, wildfires can affect soil and water quality. In a study following fires in 2005 and 2006 in three watersheds in Southern California, researchers found that organic or particulate-bound mercury in surface soils can be more readily deposited in waterways after a fire.335 Awareness of that tendency could lead to actions such as better testing of fish in affected waterways or improved sampling for water quality if the waterways are a drinking water source. However, it appears that this phenomenon may depend on local soils, vegetation, waterways, and weather because an analysis of 146 sites in Minnesota that had burned sometime between 1759 and 2004 found intense fires had reduced soil mercury concentrations for tens, even hundreds, of years.343 In contrast, such reductions lasted only a year or so in the California settings.344
A two-stage stochastic programming model for collaborative asset protection routing problem enhanced with machine learning: a learning-based matheuristic algorithm
Published in International Journal of Production Research, 2023
Hobart, Tasmania (Australia) is one of the most fire-hazardous areas in the world. In this area, many activities such as fuel treatment are implemented to reduce the risk of damage by wildfire. Therefore, the efficiency of the proposed two-phase matheuristic algorithm and the effects of considering collaboration between protection centres are examined based on a real case application in Hobart. For this reason, 20 assets are selected in Hobart and their pair distances are calculated according to their latitudes and longitudes. 5 random locations are considered for protection centres and it is assumed that 8 vehicles are available. The scenarios are generated based on the method proposed in Section 4 by using real data about wind direction, month's rainfall, and month's maximum temperature in Hobart, Tasmania (Australia). The best objective function values achieved by the CPLEX in 10,000 s and the objective values and computational times of the two-phase matheuristic algorithm are reported in Table 17. In these cases, a time limit equal to 1000 s is considered for solving the route-based version of SAPP-PC in the second phase of the two-phase matheuristic algorithm. The results show that the proposed matheuristic algorithm has a satisfactory performance for real data as well. The CPLEX solver can not find the optimal objective function values in any cases while the proposed two-phase matheuristic algorithm has found good quality solutions (0.25% gap on average) in a reasonable time (672.35 s in average).
Flame Characteristics Adjacent to a Stationary Line Fire
Published in Combustion Science and Technology, 2022
Mark A. Finney, Torben P. Grumstrup, Isaac Grenfell
Existing correlations of flame characteristics from studies of stationary fires address only a few of the many variables involved in actual wildfire spread. Almost all wildfires spread under the combined influence of wind, slope, varied energy release rate, and with differing dimensions of the flame zone. Yet the groupings of these factors and possible interactions among them in determining convective heat transfer have not been studied and are far more complex than published dimensionless correlations (see e.g. Spalding et al. 1963). None of the existing correlations have been compared for application to field-scale spreading wildfires and both issues present considerable challenges. As a first examination of these complex factors, we report laboratory experiments that were designed to measure and statistically characterize gas temperatures downstream from a rectangular flame source to address these effects on convection. Results are compared with measurements from laboratory and field-scale fires spreading in fine fuels.
Changes in extreme events and the potential impacts on human health
Published in Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 2018
Jesse E. Bell, Claudia Langford Brown, Kathryn Conlon, Stephanie Herring, Kenneth E. Kunkel, Jay Lawrimore, George Luber, Carl Schreck, Adam Smith, Christopher Uejio
With wildfires becoming more common and intense in many parts of the United States, particularly the western states, there are significant direct and indirect impacts on human health (Liu et al. 2017). Premature death, burn injuries, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Bell et al. 2016), and acute exacerbation of respiratory conditions such as asthma (Elliott, Henderson, and Wan 2013), shortness of breath (Delfino et al. 2009), decreased lung function (Youssouf et al. 2014), and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (Henderson et al. 2011) are, perhaps, the most direct outcomes of wildfire exposure. Wildfires release toxic air pollutants (e.g., CO, O3, PM2.5, PM10) that contribute to respiratory illness and can expose communities up to 1,000 miles away and for up to several weeks after the event (Naeher et al. 2007; Sapkota et al. 2005). Wildfire smoke has also been associated with low birth weight among babies born to women who were pregnant during a wildfire event (Holstius et al. 2012). The most vulnerable to the smoke-related impacts of wildfires are those with cardiopulmonary and respiratory diseases, the elderly, smokers, and firefighters (Youssouf et al. 2014).