Exposures and behavioral responses to wildfire smoke

Abstract

The impacts of environmental change on human outcomes often depend on local exposures and behavioral responses that are challenging to observe with traditional administrative or sensor data. We show how data from private pollution sensors, cell phones, social media posts, and internet search activity yield new insights on exposures and behavioral responses during large wildfire smoke events across the US, a rapidly-growing environmental stressor. Health-protective behavior, mobility, and sentiment all respond to increasing ambient wildfire smoke concentrations, but responses differ by income. Indoor pollution monitors provide starkly different estimates of likely personal exposure during smoke events than would be inferred from traditional ambient outdoor sensors, with similar outdoor pollution levels generating >20x differences in average indoor PM2.5 concentrations. Our results suggest that the current policy reliance on self protection to mitigate health risks in the face of rising smoke exposure will result in modest and unequal benefits.

Wildfire influence on recent US pollution trends

“…Our approach to isolating smoke PM 2.5 at monitoring stations is similar to other recent work (6,8,26), and for it to successfully isolate wildfire's contribution to surface PM 2.5 , it must be the case that the HMS plumes accurately describe the location of wildfire smoke on a given day, and that the presence or absence of a plume is not correlated with other non-wildfire sources of variation in surface PM 2.5 . To the first concern, we find in our data that having a smoke plume overhead is associated with an average 4.74 𝜇g/m 3 increase in PM 2.5 after controlling for stationspecific averages and average differences in PM 2.5 between states, months, and years using fixed effects regression.…”

“…Isolating wildfire smoke PM 2.5 We measure total PM 2.5 at the daily level using data from 2,489 EPA air quality monitoring stations located throughout the contiguous US, where stationday average PM 2.5 is calculated over all observations from monitors at a station location (Fig S1) (14,25). To understand when smoke from fires may be affecting ground pollution levels, we follow earlier work (6,8,26) and construct a binary classification of smoke days for each stationday using data on smoke plumes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hazard Mapping System (HMS) (27), which are analyst-identified plume boundaries based on visible bands of satellite imagery (28)(29)(30). A station-day is classified as a smoke day if it falls within a smoke plume on a given day.…”

Air Pollution and the Labor Market: Evidence from Wildfire Smoke

“…For wildfire smoke in particular, survey research has documented various behavioral responses, such as spending more time indoors, running air conditioners for longer times, and missing work (Jones et al, 2015). Burke et al (2021) documents a host of awareness and behavior changes, including health-protective behaviors, mobility, and sentiment, in response to increasing wildfire pollution. A growing literature in economics has shown that air pollution exposure can also lead to missed work days and reduced productivity.…”

Sixth Oregon climate assessment

“…Fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) in wildfire smoke can increase the incidence of violent crime (Burkhardt et al 2019), worsen health outcomes (Bishop et al 2018, Deryugina et al 2019, and reduce labor productivity (Graff Ziven and Neidell 2012). Furthermore, current government policies that rely on individuals to protect themselves from wildfire smoke, such as by staying inside or buying air filters, are likely to have minimal benefits that are likely to be unequally distributed across household-based income (Burke et al 2022).…”