The Wildfires Seen Across The Country
These past few days have been consistently gloomy; the air remains thick, aggravating and the sun seems to stay hidden away. Why? Social media posts may be popping up on your feed, covering the orange smog in New York City, wildfires in Canada… but how is it connected to us here in Richmond, Virginia? What are the larger implications?
Simply put, wildfires are exacerbated by climate change. Although many wildfires are naturally occurring, often the result of lightning strikes, around half are caused by anthropogenic activities. Dry, hot weather increases the amount of lightning and makes otherwise manageable fires spiral out of control. Climbing global temperatures, even slight incremental increases, cultivate a breeding ground for intractable fires. Rising temperatures are attributed to the burning of fossil fuels and other practices that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. The persistence of these detrimental habits has contributed to Earth’s temperatures rising at a rate of 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since 1981; since the inception of the Industrial Revolution in 1880 up until 1981, Earth’s temperatures rose at a rate of 0.14 degrees Fahrenheit per decade.
Similarly to the rest of North America, Canada’s spring is blooming weeks early and fall is arriving weeks too late. According to Edward Struzik, a fellow at Queen's Institute for Energy and Environmental Policy at Queen's University in Canada, in the context of wildfires, this allows more time for “fires and grasslands to burn.” We are one month into Canada’s wildfire season. One. Already, land area larger than the state of Maryland has burned. As the burning continues, smoke drifts south and covers North American cities, affecting more than 100 million people. From Vermont to Michigan, Kansas to South Carolina, and of course, to Virginia, local, state, and federal officials have all issued air quality warnings.
Aside from habitat destruction, loss of precious biodiversity, billions of dollars lost in property damage, and human displacement, there exists a range of health implications associated with exposure to the smoke and smog produced by wildfires. The haze we see looking out of our windows or while strolling outside (hopefully not for too long) is made up of particulate matter and several noxious gases. This is because, unlike regular air pollution, wildfire smoke is the aftermath of burning vegetative materials like soil, dry matter, and trees, and things in cities like metals, plastics, and other synthetic items. Kent Pinkerton, Co-Director of the Center for Health and the Environment at the University of California (UC), Davis states that in laboratory experiments, a given amount of wildfire smoke causes more inflammation and tissue damage than the same amount of air pollution. Wildfire smoke exposure has been linked to higher rates of heart attacks, strokes, cardiac arrests, eye irritation, skin problems, increases in emergency room visits for respiratory conditions, and weakened immune defenses. In addition, Canadian researchers have found that people exposed to wildfires living within 50km of residential locations had a 4.9% relatively higher incidence of lung cancer than unexposed populations, and a 10% relatively higher incidence of brain tumors.
Unfortunately, these fires are not going away anytime soon. For years, we on the East coast were only looking at the black, orange-y sky through a television screen - now, we don’t have that luxury. It feels like we are hurtling toward a dystopian future, with little we can do to prevent the powers that be who are writing our story from penciling in “The End” and calling it a day. Luckily for us, we don’t have to rely on the “powers that be.” We have the ability to take matters into our own hands, to retake and pivot the narrative to a story with a better, less smoggy ending. We can use our voice. We can choose elected officials who not only recognize our shared reality, but who embrace our shared responsibility of choosing sustainable solutions and regenerative practices. We can make more conscious choices about the companies we decide to support when it comes time to do the weekly grocery shopping, for example. The burden should not be on us, as individuals, but as a collective. We can work towards clearer, brighter days.
-Maia Zasler
Smog: smoke or other atmospheric pollutants combined with fog in an unhealthy or irritating mixture.
Climate Change: a long-term change in the earth's climate, especially a change due to an increase in the average atmospheric temperature.
Anthropogenic: caused or produced by humans.
Fossil Fuels: any combustible organic material, as oil, coal, or natural gas, derived from the remains of former life.
Greenhouse Gases: any of the gases whose absorption of solar radiation is responsible for the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and the fluorocarbons.
Industrial Revolution: the totality of the changes in economic and social organization that began about 1760 in England and later in other countries, characterized chiefly by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines.
Biodiversity: biological diversity among and within plant and animal species in an environment.
