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Smoke from wildfires spreading across the country from western North America can cause heart and respiratory problems thousands of miles away, a new study has found.
Medical visits for heart and lung problems in the Baltimore region increased by 20 percent during six days in June 2023, when smoke from western Canada moved across the continent, according to the study, published Friday atOpen JAMA Network.
Those fires, the study authors explained, created a large plume that traveled about 2,000 miles, creating poor air quality on the East Coast of the United States and causing an increase in doctor visits.
“Baltimore had very dark skies and we could all smell the smoke in the air,” lead author Mary Maldarelli, a pulmonary critical care fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said in a statement.
“But most importantly, my patients came to me saying they coughed a little more and needed their medicine more often,” Maldarelli continued. “They felt a lot sicker than they used to when these wildfires happened.”
To reveal whether smoke-filled days were linked to quantifiable impacts, Maldarelli and a team of data scientists and visualization experts analyzed satellite and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data to identify six “hotspot” days. Those were the days when smoke-related pollution exceeded EPA standards for safe air quality in all 23 Maryland counties.
During this period, split between June 6-8 and June 28-30, scientists found a 9.4- and 7.4-fold increase, respectively, in fine particulate pollution levels, in compared to the rest of the days in 2023.
The researchers then examined a database of nearly 2 million de-identified patient records, comparing medical visits for heart and respiratory conditions in June 2023 with those in June 2018 and 2019.
Finally, they observed a 55 percent increase in the overall risk of a heart- or lung-related outpatient visit occurring during hot spot days.
“These patients tend to be older, nonsmokers, and more socioeconomically affluent than typical patients who see their physicians for cardiovascular conditions on good air quality days,” said corresponding author Bradley Maron, a professor at the UMD Faculty of Medicine. in a statement.
The researchers also identified an 18 percent increase in the likelihood that patients would see a doctor for cardiopulmonary complications on those days.
With more extreme wildfire events presumably on the horizon, scientists stressed the importance of equipping doctors with better tools to deal with such circumstances.
In particular, they said their findings may indicate that lower-income patients are not getting the care they need in smoky conditions.
Mark Gladwin, the dean of the School of Medicine and who was not an author of the study, emphasized the need to leverage his institution’s ability to provide early care to at-risk patients.
“There may be crucial ways to prevent cardiovascular complications on smog days simply by providing them with telehealth visits or other ways to access care,” Gladwin said.
