Schollaert C L, Marlier M E, Marshall J D, Spector J T, Busch Isaksen T
Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences University of Washington Seattle WA USA.
Department of Environmental Health Sciences Fielding School of Public Health University of California Los Angeles Los Angeles CA USA.
Geohealth. 2024 Apr 22;8(4):e2023GH000961. doi: 10.1029/2023GH000961. eCollection 2024 Apr.
Wildfires, prescribed burns, and agricultural burns all impact ambient air quality across the Western U.S.; however, little is known about how communities across the region are differentially exposed to smoke from each of these fire types. To address this gap, we quantify smoke exposure stemming from wildfire, prescribed, and agricultural burns across Washington, Oregon, and California from 2014 to 2020 using a fire type-specific biomass burning emissions inventory and the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model. We examine fire type-specific PM concentration by race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and in relation to the Center for Disease Control's Social Vulnerability Index. Overall, population-weighted PM concentrations are greater from wildfires than from prescribed and from agricultural burns. While we found limited evidence of exposure disparities among sub-groups across the full study area, we did observe disproportionately higher exposures to wildfire-specific PM exposures among Native communities in all three states and, in California, higher agricultural burn-specific PM exposures among lower socioeconomic groups. We also identified, for all three states, areas of significant spatial clustering of smoke exposures from all fire types and increased social vulnerability. These results provide a first look at the differential contributions of smoke from wildfires, prescribed burns, and agricultural burns to PM exposures among demographic subgroups, which can be used to inform more tailored exposure reduction strategies across sources.
野火、计划性焚烧和农业焚烧都会影响美国西部的环境空气质量；然而，对于该地区的社区如何不同程度地暴露于这些不同类型火灾产生的烟雾中，我们却知之甚少。为了填补这一空白，我们利用特定火灾类型的生物质燃烧排放清单和GEOS-Chem化学传输模型，对2014年至2020年期间华盛顿州、俄勒冈州和加利福尼亚州因野火、计划性焚烧和农业焚烧产生的烟雾暴露情况进行了量化。我们按种族/民族、社会经济地位，并参照疾病控制中心的社会脆弱性指数，研究了特定火灾类型的细颗粒物浓度。总体而言，野火产生的人口加权细颗粒物浓度高于计划性焚烧和农业焚烧。虽然在整个研究区域内，我们发现各亚组之间暴露差异的证据有限，但我们确实观察到，在这三个州的原住民社区中，暴露于野火特定细颗粒物的比例特别高，而在加利福尼亚州，社会经济地位较低的群体中，暴露于农业焚烧特定细颗粒物的比例较高。我们还确定了这三个州中所有火灾类型烟雾暴露显著空间聚集且社会脆弱性增加的区域。这些结果初步揭示了野火、计划性焚烧和农业焚烧产生的烟雾对不同人口亚组细颗粒物暴露的不同贡献，可用于制定更具针对性的跨源暴露减少策略。
