By Alissa MacMillan
Q: I’ve been thinking about the forest fires that are happening and about fires like the one at Heathrow Airport a few months ago, and even when there are major explosions. How much environmental harm are all of these fires doing?
A: The sight of more and more fires across the news is a frightening one, as is thinking of the devastation they cause. “It’s obviously damaging to whatever they burn and the economic cost and the cost to human lives is tremendous,” says Dr. Dean Venables, lecturer in physical chemistry at the Centre for Research into Atmospheric Chemistry at UCC.
But even with the terrible news of huge one-time fires, day-to-day human activity is ultimately much more damaging, he explains, both for the earth and for our health.
Scientists study the impact of air pollution by looking at the levels of particulate matter, or the tiny particles in the atmosphere that are not normally visible but that you can see when concentrations are very high, such as the smoke from a fire. They measure this across many months, averaging them for each hour of the day. Typically in Ireland, particulate levels rise from 4pm in the winter and peak from 7pm-9pm, all of this from the effects of burning solid fuel, he says. And one-time events will of course have higher levels of particulate, but the long-term average is even worse.
“When you’re very conscious of high levels of smoke, like on a cold, still, winter evening, you see a smokey halo around streetlights and a lot of smoke around,” Venables says, and these levels can get extremely high.
Health authorities approach air quality in terms of either acute exposure or long-term exposure – acute including breathing in smoke from those one-time events, long term being our daily practices – and both can be harmful.
Exposure to lower levels of pollution every day has been shown to cause long term health effects. “They might not be high or anything we notice but, over long periods of time, we also know they have harmful impacts on health.”
PREMATURE DEATHS
Venables explains that a range of studies looking at mortality rates of different cities in the U.S. have shown that “people living in more polluted areas didn’t live as long as those in cleaner areas.” They found in subjects followed over a fifteen-year period, poor health was directly related to particles in the atmosphere, even accounting for other factors like smoking, a study since replicated around the world, showing the same results.
Dublin’s smokey coal ban in 1991 is “just the best example of this,” he notes. “When they brought in the ban, they saw an immediate improvement in people’s health and changes in hospital admissions and acute admissions to hospital.” Mortality rates in Dublin were about 350 lower per year. “It bears repeating how big an effect that had.”
Around the world, about seven million people die prematurely every year from air pollution-related causes, Venables says, mostly from burning coal, wood, petrol and diesel. There are also natural sources of particles, but “nothing compared to the combustion particles.” About 400,000 premature deaths Europe-wide are associated with air pollution; in Ireland it’s 1,400, which is about ten times higher than road traffic mortalities, he says.
“What we’ve seen now is that more and more studies are reporting a range of other health effects,” he notes, a recent study from the US showing that women who were using wood burning stoves were over 40% more likely to get lung cancer than those who used heating. “These are stark findings,” he adds.
While health has improved with cleaner air, the range of impacts is much wider, he says. “It’s not just respiratory, but neurological, cognitive, getting dementia earlier, effects on unborn children and on childhood development, and levels of immunity to various diseases.”
SOLID FUELS – HIGH LEVELS
Even exposure to single fires bring lingering health effects and other unintended consequences. People’s susceptibility to covid was much worse if they had been exposed to high levels of smoke, Venables says, compromising parts of their immune systems.
Air pollution can also happen both indoors and out. “If you can smell something inside, you are also being exposed to all the pollution that’s there,” even if most of it is going up the chimney. While you likely don’t have your heating on now, this might be the moment to change your system to one that burns less. Venables point to the heat pump as the best bet, with the next best being gas, as “once you get into solid fuels, there are high levels of exposure.”
As for its impact on biodiversity, Venables notes that ammonia from big animal operations does affect sensitive habitats nearby, and bogs can be severely affected. And of course, solid fuels are major carbon emitters and environments are damaged at the site of their extraction.
On those bigger fires, and reports that forest fires are happening in places that were once relatively safe from them, for example in France, Ireland is not really at risk because of its lack of forest cover.
CONTINUED IMPROVEMENT
All this being said, “air quality is in many ways a good news story,” Venables adds. “The levels of pollution in our air are much lower than they were in the ‘80s and ‘90s, things are getting better in terms of regulation of home emissions and the burning of solid fuels.” As one example, while we used to worry about sulfur dioxide from burning coal, levels are down by 90% or more.
The major fires are devastating, but just as crucial are our smaller actions. Even reducing the number of times you use your fire has a positive impact on health and neighbourhood air quality. Venables advises we “keep at it,” change your heating, your mode of transport, and “if you have to drive, for goodness sakes get an EV,” with hopes air quality might become even more of a good news story.
