#wildfiresmoke — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #wildfiresmoke, aggregated by home.social.
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Folks also, don't doubt this, forest fire smoke is also inside your water system, top to bottom. Protect yourself.
Physics forces smoke into the water, the opposite of the assumed protection of a closed system.
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Will Wildfire Smoke Harm Your Outdoor Plants? Here’s What Experts Say https://www.allforgardening.com/1910280/will-wildfire-smoke-harm-your-outdoor-plants-heres-what-experts-say/ #AnthonyGarza #CornellUniversity’sCooperativeExtensionProgram #garden #gardening #GroundsSupervisor #HillaryJufer #HorticultureProgramManager #OutdoorPlants #WildfireSmoke
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Under the Dome
No, not the Stephen King book, or the three seasons of the series based on the book that James and I hate watched every single episode of and then laughed ourselves silly at the snarky commentary at Reactor Magazine (then Tor). No, this was a week-long heat dome.
The heat dome moved away Friday night, but it is still blazing hot. We are on day nine of 90F/32C or above temperatures and it hasn’t rained in a week. We’ve had to water the garden from the rain barrels which went dry Friday and forced used to use water from the tap. There is a cold front moving in sometime tomorrow, Monday, that has a good chance of bringing some rain. Please think cool and liquid thoughts for us!
Along with the heat the wildfire smoke arrived Wednesday afternoon and by Thursday the air quality was hazardous and breaking records. The wind changed briefly Friday and we were able to breathe outdoors without masks into the early hours of this morning. But the wind changed again and within an hour I watched my AQ app go from low yellow (moderate) to orange (unhealthy for sensitive groups) to red (unhealthy for everyone). I’m not technically a sensitive group, but anything orange or above I wear an N95 mask while outdoors because I value my health and my lungs. So many people don’t, and I was astonished how few wore masks Thursday when the air was visibly thick with smoke.
Other than keeping the garden watered, it has not been a week for being amongst the plants.
We have a baby rabbit we keep evicting and who keeps finding their way back in. They have demolished the green beans. Friday we evicted them once and for all, but nope, I saw them this morning when I was briefly out masked and tying up tomatoes to their stakes.
We also have a couple of raccoons that have taken to visiting our roof at 3 in the morning. They especially enjoy pulling apples from the tree and—thump, thump, thump, thump down it rolls. The apples are not ripe, so we aren’t sure if they just enjoy watching them roll down the roof, or maybe they are having apple fights and throwing them at each other like a couple of teen boys. Either way, sleep is impossible. James has gone out and banged on a metal bowl to scare them off more than once. I’m sure the neighbors love that.
In chicken news, one of the witches laid an egg! It is a tiny “starter egg.”
A surprise because they are only 3 1/2 months old and I wouldn’t expect an egg until maybe the end of September or October. We think the precocious one is Baba because of her size, but looking up breed information and their egg color, the egg is pale enough it could be Nanny. All that to say who laid it is unknown, the chickens aren’t saying, and we can merely speculate.
My latest sourdough adventure is a mixed flour bread—semolina, rye, whole wheat, and bread flour—and instead of plain water I used a strong brew of Earl Grey. The smell is divine.
We sliced it up and tried it out as part of a grilled tofu sandwich that included homemade zucchini relish (zucchini from the farmers market because I prefer to grow winter squash and since I save seeds, I don’t want the zucchini to cross-pollinate with the winter squash. Yes the winter squash might cross-pollinate, but that’s a different story.), a slice of grilled eggplant from the garden, arugula from the garden, and a little dijon mustard.
Does it taste as good as it looks? Oh yes, yes it does. The Earl Grey adds a subtle flavor note that compliments the flour combination. Will definitely make this one again sometime.
If it is hot where you are, take care in the heat. And if you too are blanketed with wildfire smoke, please take care of your lungs.
#airQuality #apples #babyRabbit #greenBeans #heatDome #raccoons #sourdough #starterEgg #wildfireSmoke -
Not just human health! The #Toxic Blend of LA’s Urban #WildfireSmoke Will Have Lasting Health Consequences
Los Angeles residents are breathing bits of "cars, metal pipes, plastics."
By Zoya Teirstein, January 22, 2025“These fires are different from previous quote-unquote ‘wildfires,’ because there are so many structures that burned,” said Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. 'Everything in the households got burned — cars, metal pipes, plastics.'
"#Wildfiresmoke is toxic. Burning trees and shrubs produce very fine #particulatematter, known by the shorthand PM 2.5, which burrow deep into the lungs and can even infiltrate the bloodstream, causing cold- and flu-like symptoms in the short term, and heart disease, lung cancer, and other chronic issues over time.
"But the fires that raced through Los Angeles burned thousands of homes, schools, historic buildings, and even medical clinics, blanketing the city in thick smoke. For several days after the first fire started, the city’s air quality index, or #AQI, exceeded 100, the threshold, typically seen during wildfires, at which air becomes unhealthy to breathe for children, the elderly, and those with asthma. In some parts of the city, the AQI reached 500, a number rarely seen and always hazardous for everyone.
"At the moment, air pollution experts know how much smoke fills the air. That’s shown improvement in recent days. But they don’t know what’s in it. 'What are the chemical mixtures in this smoke?' asked Kai Chen, an environmental scientist at the Yale School of Public Health. 'In addition to fine particulate matter, there are potentially other hazardous and #carcinogenic organic compounds — gas pollutants, trace metals, and microplastics.'
"Previous research shows that the spikes in unhealthy air quality seen during such events lead to higher rates of hospitalizations for issues like asthma, and even contribute to heart attacks among those with that chronic disease. A 2024 study on the long-term effects of smoke exposure in California showed that particulate matter from wildfires in the state from 2008 to 2018 contributed to anywhere from 52,000 to 56,000 premature deaths. A health assessment of 148 firefighters who worked the Tubbs Fire, which burned more than 36,000 acres in Northern California in 2017 and destroyed an unusually high number of structures, found elevated levels of the #PFAS known as forever chemicals, #HeavyMetals, and flame retardants in their blood and urine.
"The L.A. County Department of Public Health has formally urged people to stay inside and wear masks to protect themselves from windblown toxic dust and ash. Air quality measurements don’t take these particles into account, which means the air quality index doesn’t reveal the extent of contaminants in the air.
"Zhu and her colleagues have been collecting samples of wildfire smoke in neighborhoods near the fires. It’ll be months before that data is fully analyzed, but Zhu suspects she will find a dangerous mix of chemicals, including, potentially, #asbestos and lead — materials used in many buildings constructed before the 1970s.
"The risk will linger even after the smoke clears. The plumes that wafted over the landscape will deposit chemicals into drinking #water supplies and #contaminate# soil. When rains do come, they’ll wash #ToxicAsh into streams and across the land, said Fernando Rosario-Ortiz, an environmental engineer and interim dean of the University of Colorado Boulder environmental engineering program. 'There’s a lot of manmade materials that are now being combusted. The potential is there for contamination,' he said, noting that little research on how toxic ash and other byproducts of wildfires in urban areas currently exists. 'What we don’t have a lot of information on is what happens now.'
"After the Camp Fire razed Paradise, California, in 2018, water utilities found high levels of volatile organic compounds [#VOCs] in #DrinkingWater. Similar issues have arisen in places like Boulder County, Colorado, where the Marshall Fire destroyed nearly 1,000 structures in 2021, Rosario-Ortiz said, though the presence of a contaminant in a home doesn’t necessarily mean it will be present in high levels in the water. Still, several municipal water agencies in Los Angeles issued preemptive advisories urging residents not to drink tap water in neighborhoods near the Palisades and Eaton fires. It’ll be weeks before they know exactly what’s in the water.
"As wildfires grow ever more intense and encroach upon urban areas, cities and counties must be prepared to monitor the health impacts and respond to them. 'This is the first time I’ve ever even witnessed or heard anything like this,' said Zhu, who raised her daughter in Los Angeles and has lived there for decades, said. 'Even being in the field studying wildfires and air quality impacts, I never imagined that a whole neighborhood, a whole community in Palisades, would burn down.'"
Read more:
https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-toxic-blend-of-las-urban-wildfire-smoke-will-have-lasting-health-consequences/?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=flipboard_rss&utm_campaign=znetwork
#AirPollution #WaterPollution #AirIsLife #WaterIsLife #ToxicMaterials #EnvironmentalDisaster #EnvironmentalDamage #Pyrocene #PyroceneEra