When the catastrophic fires of Los Angeles exploded in January 2025, the alleged firefighters and neighbors were breathing toxic air from buildings and cars, but it was not clear which risk was in public. Therefore, the Environmental Health Professor at the State of Colorado’s University has intended to get answers.
Volckens sent 10 air pollution detectors to Los Angeles to measure the amounts Heavy metals, benzene and other chemicals those who smoked more than those who freed the flames 16,000 homes, business and other structuresbecoming one of the most cost of natural disasters in the country.
“These catastrophic events are happening. They release the pollution environment and the surrounding community,” Volckens shared his results with its own air regulators. “We have this kind of traumatic experience, and then we stay: well, what did we breathe?”
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Scientists and public health officials have continued for a long time by contaminants, acid rain and other environmental health risks shared with the local air quality index. But hundreds of adverse chemicals are detrimental chemistry, and Los Angeles fires have led to a renewed federal state of state and regulators while the climate change turns the frequency of these natural disasters.
However, Trump administration is debatable. At the beginning of the month, the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency announced what Lee Zellin reported History in the “largest greatest” action “those who warn critics a Return environmental health regulations.
Although the values of the air quality index is a good starting point for finding out what is in the air, they do not give the whole picture of contaminants, especially in some disasters, they said Yifang zhuUCLAN Environmental Health Sciences Professor. In fact, AQI could be in a healthy bunch, “but you could still be in front of the high air toxins from fires,” he added.
The smoke of the fire of Los Angeles’s fire.
Josh Edelsonaff via Getty Images
In February, almost a dozen legislators called California to create a working group of local and federal authorities, to control what is in the air and inform the public. The natives “are not sure of the risks that are sure, in a safe way to breathe outside air. a letter To James Payne, then he was the EPA administrator. The EPA Press office has refused to comment on a new KFF health message.
Legislators have also included invoices to confront the gap in Congress and California legislature. Mike Thompson (D-Califf.) And US Senses (D-Ore.) And the US Sensation would direct the direct EPA to provide money for local air pollution agencies, including air monitors. Meanwhile, bills made by a member of Lisa Calderon Democratic State “Wildfire Smoke Research and Education Fund“To study the health impact of Wildfire smoke, especially firefighters affected by firefighters and residents.
A South coastal air quality management rangeA air pollution control agency, it works through almost 11,000 square kilometers in the Los Angeles region, measuring pollutants like ozone and carbon monoxide.
In fires, 16.8 million residents care about the air quality, five ordinary contaminants control, including PM2.5, fine particles that make up the smoke and deep particle in the body. After the fires, AQMD used mobile vans to evaluate air quality, after removal waste controls, cleaning sites and neighborhood level, said Jason Low, the head of the Department of Agency’s Monitoring and Analysis.
Local officials also received the data received by the windows that arrived at four days after exploding volcanoes. Monitors – size and size of a bread in a plastic coating in a remote control of a television. The devices, called Airpens, were controlled by dozens of air pollutants in real time and collected specific chemical measurements of the smoke composition.
Researchers were replaced by the sensors weekly, sending filters, benzene, bentroid compounds like volatile organic compounds such as black and carbon. Volcken devices gave public health officials for a month when they began as a cleaning. It is expected that the information provided may help guide future health policies in the areas of fire.
“There is no single device that can measure real-time,” he said low. “So we need to be based on different tools for each type of control.”
Rise, National Monitoring Network Funded by the National Science Foundation, after fires have been major changes. A monitor, 11 kilometers south of the mountains of San Gabriel, has detected a normal number of chlorin 40 times in the air and 110 times, a typical number of leads in the next few days. It was clear that the chemical field was smoked by the Urban Firefighters, which would be more dangerous than the tree and shrubs burned when they smoke in the rural area, Richard Flagan said the main researcher on the Los Angeles network site.
“Finally, the data is extracted in real time, both for people who do other aspects of the public,” Flagan said, due to epidemiologists of the effects of epidemioloes or the impact of peoples who develop health statistics.
Little low cost sensors can fill gaps in the age of government networks or fail to properly extract the whole picture of what is in the air. Sensors identify hot polls and improve fire smoke warnings by March 2024 US Government Liability Office Report.
Although the devices have been lower and more accurate in the last decade, some pollutants require examinations with X-ray studies and other higher equipment, the GAO natural resource and the environmental group directors said. And Gómez could be careful that the quality of the data can vary depending on the device monitor.
“Low cost sensors do good work to measure PM2.5, but it’s not so good for some of these air toxins, where they still need to do more work,” Gómez said.
Ucla’s Zhuk said the portable pollution technology, the monitors who are not only government and scientists – may be able to install equipment in its courtyards and spread the picture of what is happening in the local level.
“If the fires are predicted to be worse in the future, it may be worth the ability to capture specific types of contaminants that govern the government stops,” Zhuk said.
KFF New Health, Formerly known as Kaiser New Health (KHN), which produces a deep journalism that produces deep journalism is one of health issues and is one of the operation programs in the KFF. It is an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism.
