Recommended
U.S. researchers have detected toxic metals in more than 1,000 adults who inhaled smoke from the catastrophic wildfires that occurred on the Hawaiian island of Maui in 2023.
The scientists, who are publishing the results of their work this Monday in the journal PNAS, have thus confirmed how the health consequences of catastrophic wildfires that devastate towns and cities can extend far beyond the period when the flames are extinguished and the smoke disappears.
The work carried out with 1,400 adults in Maui between 6 and 18 months after the August 2023 wildfires revealed significantly elevated concentrations of various metals in the participants' urine, and a greater accumulation of metals in the body was also associated with abnormal lung function.
Researchers at the University of Hawaii measured 24 metals while assessing lung function through standardized breathing tests during the same visit, according to the scientific publication's abstract.
Compared to other monitoring data from the United States, Maui participants presented notably higher concentrations of several metals, including antimony (almost 40 times), manganese (3.8 times), barium (2.3 times), and arsenic (2.2 times) relative to the country's reference values.
Using three complementary statistical approaches, greater combined exposure to metals was associated with various measures of abnormal lung function; and according to the researchers, arsenic, cadmium, copper, and antimony were some of the metals that contributed most to these patterns.
The researchers highlighted that the high metal load likely reflects a complex combination of exposures rather than a single source.
Some exposures could have existed before the wildfire due to Hawaii's geology, historical land use for agriculture and industry, diet, and other environmental factors, and the disaster could have introduced new contaminants, in addition to having altered and removed contaminants already present in the soil, dust, and the built environment.
Due to the lack of pre-fire monitoring data, the current study has not been able to determine precisely what proportion of the measured load came directly from the wildfire and what proportion from chronic, persistent, or other ongoing exposures.
Much of what is known about the health effects of wildfires comes from studying smoke generated by burning vegetation, but fires like those that devastated Lahaina represent a very different type of disaster.
Wildland-urban interface fires, such as this one, can burn homes, vehicles, electronic appliances, treated wood, electrical systems, and other infrastructure, generating complex mixtures of pollutants while simultaneously removing contaminants accumulated in the soil from agricultural, industrial, or other prior uses.
Experts have noted that exposure to these chemical residues also varies by geographic area and can last for years, which is why a long-term follow-up has begun to understand how these environmental disasters transform public health. EFE
[Publicidad]