When we breathe in, we feed our bodies with the oxygen we need to survive. And when wildfires burn, the quality of the air we breathe can diminish - so what is the impact on our health?
"Not good,' says Dr Lisa Patel, she’s the Executive Director for the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. "Unfortunately, there is a greater risk for cancer. There's a greater risk if you're a pregnant individual for premature births, low birth weight and stillbirth infants."
Patel is also part of advocacy group Science Moms.
"We are moms who are scientists, and we talk to other moms about how climate change is affecting our children today and into the future. And I'm one of the science moms that's both a scientist and a pediatrician, so I focus a lot on children's health," explained Patel.
"For children, we think that wildfire smoke is about ten times as toxic to their little lungs compared to a grownup. In the immediate episodes of wildfire smoke, there's more asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia. There is some evidence that two years later, if a child is exposed in-utero or when they're very young, there's a higher risk for them needing more antibiotics or needed to use health care more," she said.
California’s largest and most damaging wildfires have occurred in the last decade, and Patel says that means our exposure to wildfire smoke is now greater than ever and not just confined to so-called wildfire season.
"All of us are, right now, living a bit of a natural experiment in a way because of unnatural disasters like what we're seeing with these wildfires. Wildfires are not new to those of us in California - but what is new is the intensity, the duration, the frequency, and that is being driven by climate change," said Dr Patel.
"Whereas we used to be exposed to wildfire smoke a few days out of the year, every few years now more or less, we're being exposed yearly and year round."
The destructive Palisades and Eaton fires rapidly spread as urban conflagrations, with buildings and homes as the primary source of fuel, rather than trees.
"Small bits of soot are more or less the same, but the other chemicals that are part of that wildfire smoke that we're breathing in, it's just like a toxic brew of the plastics that are burned, the electronics that are burned, your batteries that are burned. All of this has burned. And not only is it in the air, but it's also in the toxic ash at people's feet," she said.
The question so many of us have, is – when is it safe to go outside and to take our children outside to play?
"If it says that it's safe to go outside, go outdoors. Certainly if you smell or see smoke, then trust your nose, trust your eyes and go ahead and put that mask on. The wind can shift that smoke. And so the air quality can deteriorate pretty rapidly depending on which way the wind blows," said Patel.
"We'll have better data in ten years. But if you're like me, I don't want to wait ten years to find out how bad something is. I want to do what we can to keep people safe right now and keep wildfires from getting worse, which means we need to stop burning fossil fuels," she said.
To monitor air quality in your area, there are a number of apps you could use including IQAir and airnow.gov
