Fire smoke ails lungs, study says

Wildfires that raged through portions of Southern California this week have destroyed homes and wilderness. But if the pattern holds with that found in a UCI study published this week, the effect on lungs that breathe smoky air will reveal itself more over the weeks to come.

UCI associate professor Ralph Delfino led a study that looked at data from every non-veteran hospital in Southern California and compared it to satellite readings of smoke during 2003 and 2007 wildfires. The findings, which look at regions by ZIP code, showed hospital visits for respiratory problems spiking upward wherever enough particulate matter was in the air.

“What was very innovative about it was that it was a time-series study,” Delfino said. “We were able to look at daily [hospital] admissions and link it to daily air pollution levels.”

Those areas with smoke in the air saw a 34% increase in hospital admissions for asthma, 67% increase in admissions for acute bronchitis, 48% increase in admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and 45% increases in hospital visits for pneumonia, according to the study.

That widespread effect means that public institutions should do better outreach to advise people to avoid activities outside, as well as promoting the use of anti-inflammatory drugs by people with asthma.

“People should use their medications at the first sign of increasing asthma symptoms,” he said. “People usually wait and they wait, until the medication’s not going to take care of the problem, and they end up in the emergency room.”

Those hospital visits didn’t just increase during the fires, according to the study. Especially with infections like pneumonia, some health effects were still showing up after the smoke in the air was long gone.

“We also saw it continuing after the wildfires were fairly cleaned up,” he said. “Hospital admissions stayed or went up higher. It takes time for some of these illnesses to develop.”

Luckily for the area this time, the most recent fires haven’t had much effect on this part of Orange County, Delfino said.

“Here at UCI we were counting our blessings because that pall of smoke was going straight out to the ocean and covering Los Angeles,” Delfino said. “We were spared, pretty much. I didn’t even smell the smoke. It really depends on exactly where you live, which is why the method we use was so robust.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.