The Brief

Fires are still burning in parts of Los Angeles, and potentially dangerous winds continue to be a threat.

Wildfire smoke causes particularly dangerous air quality, especially for sensitive groups that include children and pregnant people. The multiple fires that broke out last week led L.A. County to issue a smoke advisory that ended Sunday evening, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District extended a "windblown dust and ash advisory" through Wednesday evening.

Many families are still wondering, justly, how safe the air is. Facebook and Reddit groups for parents and caretakers have been bursting with questions about what children can or can't do, and making some version of the same inquiries: How can the air supposedly be OK when it’s filled with ash? And what does that mean for kids?

What’s in the air?

First, the risks.

Wildfire smoke includes small particles that can be dangerous for your health. (It’s called particulate matter 2.5).

As LAist has reported:

"It's not just forest burning, but unfortunately, homes and businesses and factories with their own sets of plastics and toxins that… will be high levels of oxides, nitrates, and heavy metals that can be carcinogenic," said Richard Castriotta, a pulmonologist at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.

How do I know what particulates are in the air?

The South Coast Air Quality Management District monitors particulates in our region, and is responsible for the air quality index (or AQI). And experts say AQI is a good place to start. The SC AQMD marks 0-50 air quality as good, 51-100 as moderate, and anything higher as unhealthy for sensitive groups, which includes pregnant people and children.

But the AQI doesn't account for everything, said Michael Kleinman, co-director of the Air Pollution Health Effects Laboratory with UC Irvine's School of Population and Public Health.

"The particles from the fire, especially close to where the fire was, will be contaminated with other toxic materials, and they can be a harm hazard," he said.

PurpleAir, a network of public air quality sensors, offers an alternative view to AQMD's.

Read more from LAist: Does a ‘good’ Air Quality Index rating mean it’s safe to be outdoors?

The AQI is fine, but I'm still worried. What should I know?

Castriotta with USC said toxins from burning homes won't always be taken into consideration in the air quality index. And the closer you are to a fire or burned homes, the higher the risk of those contaminants in the air.

He said potentially toxic ash from burned buildings could get spread in the aftermath of a fire — but where it goes depends on the winds.

"If you're in Santa Monica close to the Palisades Fire, or if you're in Pasadena close to the Eaton Fire and the wind's blowing in that direction, then you probably want to keep your kids out of ... the outside air," he said.

Why are children and pregnant people at a higher risk around wildfire smoke?

These pollutants can be particularly dangerous for young children and pregnant people because they have higher respiratory rates, according to Rita Kachru, the chief of allergy and immunology at UCLA. This means that these groups are breathing faster — so they inhale more pollutants per minute.

"[Children are] considered a little bit more high-risk because they're a little bit more sensitive to the air pollution, because they tend to spend more time outside," Kachru said. "They tend to have more vigorous activity when they're running around outside. It's hard to tell a little 3-year-old, 'OK, go outside, but don't run around.'"

Children with pre-existing health conditions such as allergies and asthma may be at higher risk when it comes to wildfire smoke exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

How do I protect myself and my kids from bad air quality?

The best mitigation is being out of environments with unhealthy air, said Mary Johnson, a research scientist at Harvard's School of Public Health.

" If you can stay away from the smoke and stay indoors, or go where the air quality is better, you should do it. It's always better to avoid exposure," she told LAist on Monday.

If you can't leave the area entirely, multiple health experts agreed that staying inside is important to staying healthy.

"I know we all have PTSD from COVID, and that's the last thing anybody wants to hear is stay indoors," Kachru said. "But really, that is the best thing you can do."

Staying healthy while indoors

Much of the advice for keeping children safe is the same as the guidance everyone is following. The CDC advises parents to:

• Keep children indoors when air quality is poor
• Keep doors and windows closed
• If possible, use an HVAC system with an air filter or a portable air filter.

Kachru also recommends keeping infants and children cool and hydrated during a wildfire, for example by giving your child a cool bath.

"Keep them cool, so they don't have too much internal heat as well," she said.

And here are other tips we've compiled from our previous coverage and elsewhere:

• Experts recommend a HEPA filter — worth noting, HEPA stands for high efficiency particulate air — if you can get one. If you can't access an air filter, here's a guide to making your own out of a box fan.
• The Environmental Protection Agency suggests creating a clean room in your home — a designated space to keep air quality as high as possible. It has a guide to setting this up here.

We have to go outside. What should we do?

If you have to be outside in bad air quality, wear an N-95 mask. Children over the age of 2 can also wear a mask, but make sure it fits properly.

" My suggestion is to make a game out of it, so that the child will accept it," said Castriotta with USC about helping your child to wear a mask.

He also said if you need to take your kids somewhere in a car, run the air conditioning and make sure the air that's circulating is just the air that's inside the car.

We evacuated and are returning to our home. How do I know it's safe?

The L.A. County Department of Public Health advises parents returning home after a wildfire to keep children away from ash and items covered in ash.

"Think of ash like fine, dangerous dust that can be inhaled deep into the lungs and can cause major problems everywhere it lands. It's not just dirt," a county advisory states.

Before returning with children to an area impacted by wildfire, the EPA and pediatric groups recommend you check for:

• safe drinking water
• running electricity
• safe road conditions
• structurally sound homes; and
• sewage, ash, and debris have been removed

Kleinman with UC Irvine advises those returning home to wipe down walls and surfaces, and vacuum to clean the house. The county recommends a vacuum with a HEPA filter — a vacuum that sprays dust around could be counterproductive.

" Even though the ambient air, the outside air, is relatively clean, the air inside the home may be worse," Kleinman said.

He added that if you don't have an air quality monitor, looking for how much dust is accumulating is a good way to get a sense of indoor air quality.

And if you do return to a site where a home burned down, experts say to be careful afterward.

" Don't take your outer clothing that you wore into the fire zone and then wash it with the family laundry, because whatever toxic chemicals are there are going to be spread around," Kleinman said. " People have to be very cautious and avoid unnecessary exposure."

Learn more from an expert

On Jan. 22, we interviewed Kachru about all things air quality for an Instagram Live presentation. Watch it for yourself:

Wildfire smoke is an emerging nationwide crisis for the United States. Supercharged by climate change, blazes are swelling into monsters that consume vast landscapes and entire towns.

A growing body of evidence reveals that these conflagrations are killing far more people than previously known, as smoke travels hundreds or even thousands of miles, aggravating conditions like asthma and heart disease. One study, for instance, estimated that last January’s infernos in Los Angeles didn’t kill 30 people, as the official tally reckons, but 440 or more once you factor in the smoke. Another recent study estimated that wildfire haze already kills 40,000 Americans a year, which could increase to 71,000 by 2050.

Two additional studies published last month paint an even grimmer picture of the crisis in the U.S. and elsewhere. The first finds that emissions of greenhouse gases and airborne particles from wildfires globally may be 70% higher than once believed. The second finds that Canada’s wildfires in 2023 significantly worsened childhood asthma across the border in Vermont. Taken together, they illustrate the desperate need to protect public health from the growing threat of wildfire smoke, like better monitoring of air quality with networks of sensors.

The emissions study isn’t an indictment of previous estimates, but a revision of them based on new data. Satellites have spied on wildfires for decades, though in a somewhat limited way — they break up the landscape into squares measuring 500 meters by 500 meters, or about 1,600 feet by 1,600 feet. If a wildfire doesn’t fully fill that space, it’s not counted. This new study increases that resolution to 20 meters by 20 meters (roughly 66 feet by 66 feet) in several key fire regions, meaning it can capture multitudes of smaller fires.

Individually, tinier blazes are not producing as much smoke as the massive conflagrations that are leveling cities in the American West. But “they add up, and add up big time,” said Guido van der Werf, a wildfire researcher at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands and lead author of the paper. “They basically double the amount of burned area we have globally.”

With the 500-meter satellite data, the previous estimate was around 400 million hectares charred each year. Adding the small fires bumps that up to 800 million hectares, roughly the size of Australia. In some parts of the world, such as Europe and Southeast Asia, burned area triples or even quadruples with this improved resolution. While scientists used to think annual wildfire emissions were around 2 gigatons of carbon, or about a fifth of what humanity produces from burning fossil fuels, that’s now more like 3.4 gigatons with this new estimate.

The type of fire makes a huge difference in the emissions, too. A forest fire has a large amount of biomass to burn — brushes, grasses, trees, sometimes even part of the soil — and turn into carbon dioxide and methane and particulate matter, but a grass fire on a prairie has much less. Blazes also burn at dramatically different rates: Flames can race quickly through woodland, but carbon-rich ground known as peat can smolder for days or weeks. Peat fires are so persistent, in fact, that when they ignite in the Arctic, they can remain hidden as snow falls, then pop up again as temperatures rise and everything melts. Scientists call them zombie fires. “It really matters where you’re burning and also how intense the fire can become,” van der Werf said.

But why would a fire stay small, when we’ve seen in recent years just how massive and destructive these blazes can get? It’s partly due to fragmentation of the landscape: Roads can prevent them from spreading, and firefighters stop them from reaching cities. And in general, a long history of fire suppression means they’re often quickly extinguished. (Ironically, this has also helped create some monsters, because vegetation builds up across the landscape, ready to burn. This shakes up the natural order of things, in which low-intensity fires from lightning strikes have cleared dead brush, resetting an ecosystem for new growth — which is why Indigenous tribes have long done prescribed burns.) Farmers, too, burn their waste biomass and obviously prevent the flames from getting out of hand.

Whereas in remote areas, like boreal forests in the far north, lightning strikes typically ignite fires, the study found that populated regions produce a lot of smaller fires. In general, the more people dotting the landscape, the more sources of ignition: cigarette butts, electrical equipment producing sparks, even chains dragging from trucks.

Yes, these smaller fires are less destructive than the behemoths, but they can still be catastrophic in a more indirect way, by pouring smoke into populated areas. “Those small fires are not the ones that cause the most problems,” van der Werf said. “But of course they’re more frequent, close to places where people live, and that also has a health impact.”

Read Next Wildfire smoke could soon kill 71,000 Americans every yearMatt Simon
That is why the second study on asthma is so alarming. Researchers compared the extremely smoky year of 2023 in Vermont to 2022 and 2024, when skies were clearer. They were interested in PM 2.5, or particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter, from wildfire smoke pouring in from Quebec, Canada. “That can be especially challenging to dispel from lungs, and especially irritating to those airways,” said Anna Maassel, a doctoral student at the University of Vermont and lead author of the study. “There is research that shows that exposure to wildfire smoke can have much longer-term impacts, including development of asthma, especially for early exposure as a child.”

This study, though, looked at the exacerbation of asthma symptoms in children already living with the condition. While pediatric asthma patients typically have fewer attacks in the summer because they’re not in school and constantly exposed to respiratory viruses and other indoor triggers, the data showed that their conditions were much less controlled during the summer of 2023 as huge wildfires burned. (Clinically, “asthma control” refers to milder symptoms like coughing and shortness of breath as well as severe problems like attacks. So during that summer, pediatric patients were reporting more symptoms.) At the same time, climate change is extending growing seasons, meaning plants produce more pollen, which also exacerbates that chronic disease. “All of those factors compound to really complicate what health care providers have previously understood to be a safe time of year for children with asthma,” Maassel said.

Researchers are also finding that as smoke travels through the atmosphere, it transforms. It tends to produce ozone, for instance, that irritates the lungs and triggers asthma. “There’s also the potential for increased formation of things like formaldehyde, which is also harmful to human health. It’s a hazardous air pollutant,” said Rebecca Hornbrook, who studies wildfire smoke at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, or NCAR, but wasn’t involved in either study, though a colleague was involved in the emissions one. (Last month, the Trump administration announced plans to dismantle NCAR, which experts say could have catastrophic effects.)

As wildfires worsen, so too does the public health crisis of smoke, even in places that never had to deal with the haze before. Governments now have to work diligently to protect their people, like improving access to air purifiers, especially in schools. “This is no longer an isolated or geographically confined issue,” Maassel said. “It’s really spreading globally and to places that have never experienced it before.”

This article originally appeared in Grist at https://grist.org/health/wildfire-smoke-is-a-national-crisis-and-its-worse-than-you-think/.

Some homeowners in areas of California with high wildfire risk could eventually get money for new roofs or to build fire-resistant zones around their properties under a new state law that went into effect Jan. 1.

The Safe Homes grant program is designed to help low- and middle-income homeowners with fire mitigation. People who qualify could use grants to create 5-foot ember-resistant zones around properties, also known as Zone Zero, as required by law in some areas. The program will also contribute toward costs for fire-safe roofs.

The state’s Insurance Department, which is responsible for implementing the program, is working out the details around eligibility, the amount of and the distribution of grants. It is now developing an application portal that it hopes to have ready by March, said Michael Soller, spokesperson for the department.

The insurance department will be handling all the details of the grants, said Mike Dayton, chief of staff of Assemblymember Lisa Calderon, the Los Angeles-area Democrat and chair of the Assembly Insurance Committee who wrote the law, and has so far secured $3 million in the state budget to get the program started.

Soller said homeowners who have policies with admitted insurance carriers or the last-resort FAIR Plan and who live in high-risk areas will have to meet income limits set by the state housing department to be eligible for the grants, whose amounts have not been determined. Communities, cities and counties with mitigation projects could also apply for grants.

He also said the insurance department plans to advocate for additional and ongoing funding for the program.

Another source of funding could be the federal government, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Soller said. But Gov. Gavin Newsom recently tried to meet with FEMA to talk about disaster aid related to the Los Angeles County fires and was unsuccessful.

Also, two Californians in Congress have proposed legislation that would establish a federal grant program and tax credits for mitigation. U.S. Reps. Mike Thompson, a Napa Democrat, and Doug LaMalfa, an Oroville Republican, have introduced their bill for the past two sessions, but it has not made it to a floor vote.

The California Board of Forestry and Fire Protection recently extended the finalization of rules regarding Zone Zero buffers around properties to the first half of next year. The rules are expected to take effect for existing homes in 2029.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Starting Jan. 1, Californians will pay a new fee every time they buy a product with a non-removable battery — whether it's a power tool, a PlayStation, or even a singing greeting card.

The 1.5% surcharge, capped at $15, expands a recycling program that's been quietly collecting old computer monitors and TVs for two decades. The change is a result of Senate Bill 1215, authored by former state Sen. Josh Newman, a Democrat who represented parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino. It was signed into law in 2022.

Consumers will pay the fee when buying any product with an embedded battery whether it’s rechargeable or not. Many of these products, experts said, end up in the trash. In its most recent analysis, the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery estimates about 7,300 tons of batteries go to landfills illegally or by accident.

California pioneered electronic waste fees with computer monitors and TVs in 2003. The fee worked, keeping hazardous screens out of landfills and building better systems for proper disposal. But over the last 20 years, electronic waste has continued to evolve.

Powerful lithium batteries have become cheaper and more accessible as demand for technology has increased. They now power everyday products, from cellphones and AirPods to power tools and toys.

“These things are everywhere. They’re ubiquitous,” said Joe La Mariana, executive director of RethinkWaste, which manages waste services for 12 San Mateo County cities – a co-sponsor of the legislation.

They’re also, under some circumstances, a risk. Under harsh conditions at recycling and waste facilities, lithium-ion batteries can burst into flames and even explode.

“Paying a small check‑stand fee to fund proper collection is far cheaper than million‑dollar fires, higher insurance premiums, and rate hikes passed back to communities,” said Doug Kobold, executive director of the California Product Stewardship Council, which co-sponsored the legislation.

A growing problem 

In 2016, in the San Mateo County city of San Carlos, a lithium-ion battery sparked a major fire at the Shoreway Environmental Center recycling facility. It caused a four-month plant shutdown and $8.5 million in damage. RethinkWaste, a regional waste management agency, oversees that facility. As a result of the fire, its insurance premium rose from $180,000 to $3.2 million annually, La Mariana said; ratepayers ultimately bore that cost.

That fire catalyzed the waste management agency to seek solutions to the growing battery fire problem.

“Being a publicly owned facility, every bit of that property is owned and paid for by our 430,000 ratepayers,” La Mariana said. “So we have a fiduciary responsibility to maintain the integrity of these assets. But also, on a human level, we have a very high responsibility for the safety of our colleagues and our co-workers.”

Battery fires in waste and recycling facilities are an everyday hazard. Experts say they’re underreported, likely because facilities fear oversight or increases in insurance premiums.

And batteries can catch fire anywhere. Earlier this year, two girls were hospitalized after an electric scooter caught fire in a Los Angeles apartment building. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there are nearly two battery fires on U.S. flights every week.

Clean energy shift brings battery hazards

The fee consumers will pay in the new year is just one piece of the state’s evolving response to the emerging risk of lithium-ion batteries.

Single-use plastic vapes are exempt from the new law because the Department of Toxic Substances Control raised concerns about collection and recycling systems handling nicotine, a hazardous substance, said Nick Lapis, an advocate with Californians Against Waste, which co-sponsored the legislation. They’re also the fastest growing source of lithium-ion battery waste.

“If you imagine somebody’s a pack a day smoker, that means every single day they’re throwing out a device with a lithium-ion battery,” Lapis said.

Last year, assemblymembers Jacqui Irwin and Lori Wilson introduced Assembly Bill 762, a law that would ban single-use plastic vapes entirely. Lapis says he expects the Legislature to address the risk of vapes this year.

Large-scale lithium-ion batteries present great danger of a different kind.

During the Los Angeles fires, dangerous lithium-ion batteries, including from electric vehicles, were left behind — resulting in a major cleanup operation by the Environmental Protection Agency.

And almost a year ago, a fire burned at a battery storage site in Moss Landing for two days, requiring more than 1,000 people to be evacuated. Monterey County neighbors to the facility have complained of feeling sick since the fire, and a recent study detected toxic metals in nearby marshes.

In 2024, Newsom established a collaborative of state agencies, including the California Air Resources Board and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, to look into safety solutions for battery storage technologies. New CalFire regulations for battery storage systems will take effect this year.

Finding ways to properly dispose of batteries and their lithium in the waste stream is critical as the state transitions away from fossil fuels, said Meg Slattery, a scientist for Earthjustice.

“The next question becomes … where are we sourcing materials, and thinking through what happens to this when we're not using it anymore, which I think we're not traditionally great at thinking about as a society,” she said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.