Challenges in Addressing Air Quality Impacts of Wildfires

Wildfires have a wide range of effects as well as risks to fire personnel and the public. The current trend in wildfire response is to assess an incident in terms of complexity, analyze risk and make decisions which consider partners and those potentially directly affected by the fire. Historically these assessments as documented in a variety of decisions have not considered air quality impact as a critical factor. It is frequently a factor which adds complexity and occasionally will result in operational and strategic changes but it is not routinely a critical factor. Compelling evidence of the health and economic effects of wildfire air quality impacts on the public and fire personnel needs to be considered in decisions and response to wildfires. Challenges to effectively addressing the air quality impacts of wildfire will be discussed based on recent case study of the 2011 Southwestern wildfires, 2011 Florida wildfires and other examples. Improvements can be made to technical, policy and communication tools as well as to training to improve the current consideration of air quality impacts.