Study: 52,000 people died in California forest fires within a decade

Pollution from California’s wildfires has killed more than 52,000 people in a decade, according to a new study Friday, as the western United States braces for a hot summer that could bring more fires.

In California and other parts of the country, huge areas of forest and grassland are burned every year, causing millions of dollars in destruction and sometimes losing human lives.

However, researchers say the particles released by the fires are having a devastating impact on the local population, far exceeding the number of deaths directly attributable to them.

A study led by Rachel Connolly of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that these tiny air pollutants – known as PM2.5 because they are 2.5 micrometers or smaller – are killing scores of people.

The team examined data from 2008 to 2018 and isolated the amount of PM2.5 released specifically by wildfires, as opposed to the amount generated by other sources such as transportation and manufacturing.

They found that at least 52,480 premature deaths were due to this particular pollution. The cost of treating people affected by the pollutants was estimated at $432 billion.

“The importance of wildfire management will only increase in the coming decades as desiccation intensifies with climate change and more regions become vulnerable to fire,” the researchers wrote in their paper published on Friday by Scientific advances.

“These findings have direct implications for California, a state that is at the forefront of climate policy development, has many fire-prone regions, and has a diverse population that needs to be protected,” they added.

“It is critical to expand the evidence on the health impacts of wildfires and other climate-related stressors.”

The study comes at a time when large parts of California and the American West are suffering from the first heat wave of the year.

Temperatures of up to 49 degrees Celsius raged in Death Valley on Thursday, while Las Vegas reached 40 degrees Celsius.

The heatwave in early summer has raised concerns that the 2024 fire season could be even more severe after two relatively mild years due to wet winters.

So far, the fires that have broken out have mainly been grass fires, which are easier to control and do not burn as hot.

But as summer heats up and larger shrubs and trees begin to dry out, they become vulnerable to downed power lines or discarded cigarettes.

After about 20 years of drought and a climate that is slowly drying out, California has been hit by an alarming number of major fires this century – 18 of the 20 largest fires in the state’s history occurred in the last two decades.

Wildfires are a natural – and necessary – part of the wilderness life cycle.

But climate change, caused by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels and the associated greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is making events bigger, hotter and more unpredictable.