EPA Wildfire Research: Impacts on Air and Water Quality

EPA Wildfire Research: Impacts on Air and Water Quality WESTAR-WRAP Spring Business Meeting 2024, Riverside, California Wildland fire smoke impacts millions of people in the United States every year. The EPA’s Office of Research and Development is addressing our increasingly smokey future with a variety of initiatives, including innovative smoke sampling methods and approaches and readying a state-of-the-art instrumentation in a mobile air quality laboratory based at the Pacific Ecological Systems Division lab in Corvallis OR. While the negative impacts of PM2.5 on air quality and human health are well established, wildfires mobilize additional pollutants such as heavy metals and nutrients which threaten clean air, clean water, and negatively impact human health. This presentation will include recent EPA efforts to study smoke impacts and address a wide range of emerging issues wildland fire is contributing to detrimental air and water quality and EPA resources to address this growing threat to human health and the environment.  

Impact/Purpose

This is an invited presentation to the Western States Air Resources Council (WESTAR). This is the email request. Several years ago, I heard your presentation to the NW AIRQUEST group about some of the monitoring you do with the Pacific Ecological Systems Division. Some of the people for the Western states, including Anthony Barnack and Dan Johnson from Oregon, have been meeting recently to talk about monitoring after wildfires. The states have been discussing what to monitor, including PAHs, other toxics, and metals, and what resources are available for this type of monitoring. I am writing to ask if you would be able to present some of the capabilities of the Pacific Ecological Systems Division’s mobile air-quality monitoring lab and some of the findings from using the lab during and after wildfires at WESTAR’s Spring business meeting this month. If you are unfamiliar with WESTAR, we are an organization that works with the 15 western state air quality agencies to promote the exchange of information between them, serve as a forum to discuss western regional air quality issues of common concern, and share resources for the common benefit of the member states. For part of our Spring meeting, the state air directors expressed an interest in learning about and discussing the impacts of wildfires on communities in the West. The other presentations during this session will address indoor exposure to PAHs and recent research on chromium 6 levels found in the wildfire ash. The air directors would benefit from hearing about the resources and research from your Division as part of this session. The meeting will be April 16-18 in Riverside, California. I understand that this is short notice so we would welcome a virtual presentation from you. If you were able to be there in person that would be great. In addition to Western state air directors, we also have local, tribal, and federal land management agency representatives that attend our meetings. We expect to have about 40 people attend in person and about 60 who attend virtually.  

Citation

Markwiese, James. EPA Wildfire Research: Impacts on Air and Water Quality. WESTAR/WRAP 2024 Spring Business Meeting, Riverside, CA, April 16 - 18, 2024.