Study: Wildfire pollution worse than thought
By Doyle Rice, USA Today
Monstrous wildfires not only devastate communities and sometimes kill dozens each year in the U.S., but they also release a toxic brew of hazardous pollution, a new study found.
That pollution, often in the form of microscopic specks known as aerosols, is “a hazard to human health, particularly to the lungs and heart,” said study lead author Greg Huey from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
In fact, the study found that fires emit these fine particles — which are much smaller than a grain of sand or a human hair — into the air at a rate three times as high as standards set by the Environmental Protection Agency.