Wildfires release vast amounts of visible pollutants into the atmosphere that darken skies and push people indoors to avoid unhealthy air.
Wildfires release vast amounts of visible pollutants into the atmosphere that darken skies and push people indoors to avoid unhealthy air. But a near-invisible threat to public health associated with wildfires is ozone, the reactive oxygen molecule O3 that harms the lungs and other sensitive tissues in the human body.
New research led by the University of Utah documents how smoke from the West’s wildfires substantially increases ozone concentrations, often above federal health standards, even in remote places with few human emission sources of ozone’s precursor pollutants, such as nitric oxides, or NOx.
“The question I wanted to ask was, if we don’t have urban emissions, let’s say that we zero out all emissions, will we still have an ozone problem?” said lead author Derek Mallia, a research assistant professor of atmospheric sciences. “This study suggests that we could remove all of the regional emissions from anthropogenic sources of NOx, but fires can still produce a large amount of ozone.”
Read More: University of Utah
Photo Credit: Saiho via Pixabay
