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Last
week, the U.S. Forest Service and
Department of the Interior expanded
the situations in which their
firefighters are allowed to wear N95
masks.
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Starting
in September, the federal government began allowing
firefighters to wear the masks, but not
when they were working on the fire line,
only at times such as in camp and
sitting in vehicles. Now they’ll be
allowed to wear them during some work
battling wildfires, including patrolling
for areas where the blaze has jumped
past fire lines and putting out
smoldering remains after a fire is
contained.
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Masks
are still prohibited during
firefighters’ most grueling tasks —
digging lines to stop fires and directly
attacking flames. And the masks they’re
using, N95s, do not protect against all
of the toxic substances in wildfire
smoke.
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Nonetheless,
health experts applauded the move as a
step in the right direction.
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Here’s
why it took so long to get here:
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Research
has linked wildfire smoke to a range of
long-term health issues, including
respiratory problems, cardiovascular
diseases and cancers.
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“The
fire service knows that,” said Rachael
Jones, professor and chair of
environmental health sciences at UCLA’s
Fielding School of Public Health. “They
all have stories” of lung damage or
cancer, either their own or their
coworkers’.
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But
this wasn’t always common knowledge.
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“The
verbiage was that wildland smoke was
benign,” one firefighter told Jones’
colleagues for a recent study
on firefighters’ thoughts on mask use.
“It was like sitting around a campfire.”
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Even
as scientists and fire officials came to
terms with the very real long-term
health risks, some firefighters still
had concerns that masks could muffle
communication, make it hard to breathe
and interfere with other equipment. That
slowed adoption.
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Missing
crucial orders because a voice is
muffled, or struggling to pull out an
emergency fire shelter because a mask is
in the way, could be the difference
between life and death.
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“These
are not trivial things when the fact is
that they reflect life safety outcome,”
Jones said.
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Deciding
on the right type of mask or respirator
has slowed adoption too. There are no
commercially available respirators that
protect against all of the dangerous
pollutants in wildfire smoke.
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Scientists
have not even fully determined which
pollutants pose the greatest risks to
firefighters, further complicating a
choice.
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N95s
filter for solid particles in the air
but not dangerous gases. Heavy smoke or
sweat can cause them to clog.
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Half-face
respirators — often gray rubber with
pink canisters — offer different filters
for different gases, but none can filter
all of the concerning gases in wildfire
smoke. The masks and backup canisters
are also much bulkier to carry around
than N95s.
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Respirators
that can filter out all of the
“literally hundreds” of concerning
compounds in smoke “just simply don’t
exist,” said Matt Rahn, research
director for the Wildfire
Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated
to protecting firefighters.
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The
result: “In our pursuit for perfection
in finding the best respiratory devices
for firefighters, we’ve basically fallen
into a decision paralysis of doing
nothing,” Rahn said. “It’s been that way
for years.”
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The
federal government acknowledges the
limitations of N95s in its educational
material for firefighters. In a
statement to The Times, the Forest
Service said it will begin studying
different respirators in a small pilot
program to “determine if their use will
be suitable for the wildland fire
environment.”
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The
Forest Service said that N95s are
already “readily available” to its
firefighters and that it has more than
30,000 of them.
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More
recent wildfire news
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Many
in the western United States will have
to celebrate the country’s 250th
birthday with fewer fireworks due to
heightened wildfire risk. Utah’s
governor restricted fireworks statewide
through July 5 as multiple wildfires
raged in the state and the National
Weather Service issued a rare
“Particularly Dangerous Situation”
warning, Kathy McCormack
reports for the Associated Press.
California officials, meanwhile, warned
of zero tolerance for illegal fireworks,
with some local governments recently
increasing fines, Kassia
Bonesteel reports for CBS News.
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Three
federal wildland firefighters were
killed and two were injured by the
fast-moving Knowles fire in Colorado on
Saturday. As a ground crew began some of
the first attacks on the fire, an order
came over the radio to “get out of there
now,” CNN reported.
Within minutes, the crew was forced to
deploy their emergency shelters, a
desperate last line of defense when
escape is impossible. Firefighters lined
the streets of Grand Junction, Colo., on
Sunday in a procession for their fallen
colleagues.
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Much
of the western U.S. is facing above
normal fire potential after one of the
hottest and driest winters in recent
years. Coastal Southern California,
conversely, is facing average
wildfire potential, fire weather
analysts say, thanks to monsoon breezes
bringing damp air from the tropics.
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A
few last things in climate news
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A
pair of hazardous chemical crises in
Greater Los Angeles — at an aerospace
facility in Garden Grove and a warehouse
in Boyle Heights — have left
Californians questioning why
environmental and public health agencies
such as the South Coast Air Quality
Management District and the state’s
Division of Occupational Safety and
Health failed to address known risks, a
team from CalMatters
and the LA Local
reports.
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The
Boyle Heights warehouse fire coincided
with a spike in emergency room visits
for smoke inhalation and throat pain, my colleague
Hayley Smith found. Meanwhile, the
water used to fight the toxic blaze
ended up in the Los Angeles River, The Times’ Mack
Baysinger reports. Local
organizers collected water samples for
testing as L.A. County public works
deployed floating barriers to contain
the runoff.
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The
headwaters of the Colorado River, a
vital source of water for 35 million
people and 5 million acres of farmland,
is drier than anyone can remember, my colleague
Ian James reports. As seven U.S.
states and Mexico remain gridlocked in
complex debates over use of the river,
it’s a stark reminder that the climate
of the 21st century will leave less for
everyone.
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Europe
is facing its second major heat wave of
the year, with France recording its
hottest day ever, Lauren Dalban
reports for Inside Climate News.
As residents struggled to handle the
extreme heat, worsened by climate
change, so did climate infrastructure
championed to combat it. Trains were
halted as the heat risked buckling
tracks and nuclear reactors were slowed
or powered off as the cooling water they
discharged became too hot, the New York
Times’ Chico Harlan reported.
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This
is the latest edition of Boiling
Point, a newsletter about climate
change and the environment in the
American West. Sign up here
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And listen to our Boiling Point
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For
more wildfire news, follow @nohaggerty
on X and @nohaggerty.bsky.social
on Bluesky.
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