Why smoke from Western wildfires could be harming you—even miles away from the flame
As wildfires grow larger and more frequent across the West, researchers from Colorado, Utah, and California are digging into how smoke affects the air—and our health.
In a new study published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, the team shows that large wildfires, like those we’ve seen in Colorado, Oregon, and California in recent years, produce large amounts of ozone into the atmosphere. This not only impacts our lungs and other health concerns but also contributes to the warming of the planet.
CU Denver mathematics professor emeritus Jan Mandel was part of the research team, which included faculty from the University of Utah (UT) and San Jose State University. The study was led by Derek Mallia, a research assistant professor of Atmospheric Sciences at UT, who has long collaborated with Mandel on wildfire modeling.
The team focused on large wildfires in 2020 that affected much of the Western United States. From Aug. 15-26, 2020, wildfires burned more than 1 million acres across seven northern California counties, causing $12 billion in damage. Dozens of fires raged elsewhere, including Utah’s 90,000-acre East Fork fire and Oregon’s Lionshead and Beachie Creek fires that burned a combined 400,000 acres. During that same time, multiple air quality and pollutant alerts were issued in Colorado as residents dealt with smoke-filled skies.
Mandel developed most of the computer code used to model the wildfire chemical emissions that ended up in the atmosphere. He worked alongside Mallia and Adam Kochanski, associate professor at San Jose State University, both longtime collaborators.
“Wildfires do not emit ozone directly,” Mandel said. “Wildfire smoke contains chemical compounds that react with sunlight to produce ozone, often far from the fire itself. Modeling this requires sophisticated atmospheric chemistry and weather prediction software, which we integrated with our wildfire model.”
The research paper concludes that, on average, the presence of wildfire smoke increases ozone concentrations by 21 parts per billion (ppb). That is on top of already high ozone levels in the West, pushing concentrations beyond the 70-ppb health standard set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
