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Health Effects of Wildfires
Citation:
Rappold, A. Health Effects of Wildfires. American Thoracic Society, Washington, District Of Columbia, May 19 - 24, 2017.
Impact/Purpose:
This talk summarizes some of the most recent scientific evidence about health effects of wildfires for a group of mostly medical doctors.
Description:
The Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970 as a regulatory agency charged with the evaluation of air pollutants and emissions “as necessary to protect public health and the environment” and to regulate pollutants “which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health.” In fact, public health as a focus is noted 23 times in the Clean Air Act Amendment 1970 - the legislative mandate generally regarded as the launch point of modern air quality science. Through this mandate to regulate air pollutants, most prominently the so-called NAAQS pollutants, air quality in the U.S. has dramatically improved over the 46 years since the Act. However, the issue of public health is one that is more than regulation. It is a concept that involves translation of monitoring data for public consumption, communication of pollutant impacts to health practitioners, and strategic approaches to communication and implementation of the air standards, sometimes under unusual events such as wildfires. As the public and environmental health community moves forward, there is a need to optimize not only the data needed for the setting of relevant NAAQS, but also the delivery and translation of the data in the context of the regulations to the health community and lay public. This session provides some insight into these nuanced applications of air quality health science and exposure science.