Podcast: WHEN THE SMOKE DRIFTS IN

Story and podcast by Jon Foster

When the Smoke Drifts In

In the past two years, wildfire smoke has been an increasingly noticeable aspect of late summer. With its haziness comes health complications for sensitive populations.

Bellingham, Washington is known for its beautiful scenery and clean air. The last couple of years, however, people have been experiencing worsening smoke from wildfires drifting through the city and August of 2018 was one of the worst wildfire seasons yet. A high pressure system and wildfire smoke from British Columbia, Canada; Siberia; Eastern Washington; California and Oregon all combined to create a perfect storm. Smoke drifted in and stayed for days and what little wind there was only brought more smoke to settle over the city.

While most people were able to brush off the smoky air as something of a nuisance, others weren’t so lucky. Sensitive populations like the elderly, children and people with respiratory illnesses were the most at risk of experiencing the side effects of wildfire smoke. People can experience the effects of wildfire smoke differently; from eye and skin irritation, shortness of breath, coughing and wheezing, all the way to cardiovascular and respiratory complications that can lead to death.

John Wolpers has been at the Whatcom Health Department since 2005 when he moved from Kittitas County’s Health Department. He has worked for local health departments for 32 years. Born in Santa Monica, California, he moved to Washington when he was in second grade.

He grew up in Longview and does not recall wildfire smoke during the summers. For him, experiencing wildfire smoke in the hottest part of the summer has become a recent phenomenon.

Wolpers was not immune to the effects of wildfire smoke. He is asthmatic and the smoke last year was difficult for him and his staff at the Health Department. He noticed he was using his rescue inhaler more frequently, even when he was in his house. Wolpers normally goes for a 15 minute walk every day for exercise. On the three worst days of bad air in 2018, he decided to not go out so he could lower his intake of the bad air.

“At work, a lot of my staff are field staff,” Wolpers says. “So they’re out in the field at all times and it was like, ‘you know, back off guys. Stay in the office, get some stuff done.’”

Smoke from wildfires release pollutants into the air similar to those released by oil refineries. The pollutants that are released are called particulate matter and can be inhaled deep into the lungs depending on their size.

Wildfires are sparked from a variety of sources. The usual cause of wildfires are humans and lightning, according to Seth Preston, the communications program manager at the Northwest Clean Air Agency. In 2018 alone, more than 1,700 fires were reported, causing over 400,000 acres across Washington to burn. Of those fires, 84% or 1,448 were caused by humans.

“When a forest fire hits, our immediate response is to go out and put it out,” Wolpers says. “But if you look at how the health of the forest is, fire is actually good especially in certain types of systems such as pine trees. They actually need fire in which to then help spread the cones and seeds and repopulate trees.”

Forest management includes clearing the underbrush– the smaller trees, bushes, and brushwood that falls to the ground throughout the life of a forest. While Wolpers was in college, he worked for the forest service. They would go out during the summer and pick up all the underbrush and pile them into what they called slash piles.

Later on in the year, when the snow covered the ground and insulated the forest from wildfires, they would light the slash piles on fire. This process of forest management would mitigate the risk of a fire spreading and quickly becoming something like the 3% of wildfires that burned over 100 acres each in 2018. Wolpers says these practices have slowed down over the years, partly due to funding.

“A lot of times, especially with lightning strikes, it is in areas that are very rugged terrain where people can’t get easy access to,” Wolpers says. “But you know with a lightning strike, it just takes that one to go and it moves.”

His job as the environmental health manager has quickly become one that handles safety messaging when it comes to limiting exposure to smoke or bad air. In conjunction with Washington’s Department of Health as well as Ecology, they have been looking at how to respond to wildfires.

Wolpers says they created the Wildfire Smoke Impacts Committee in 2018 to help with the messaging. The committee created a tool kit to educate the public about wildfire smoke as a public health issue in a way that made sure everyone is getting the same message no matter where they are in Washington.

“So whether you run to Asotin County which is way down in the Southeast, whether you run down to Clark County or whatever, the messages that you’re going to hear about Wildfire smoke and impacts to health are going to be the same across the state,” Wolpers says.

A Small Agency With an Important Role

The Northwest Clean Air Agency is a small governmental agency based in Mount Vernon that monitors and forecasts air quality levels for Skagit, Whatcom and Island counties. On 1600 S. Second St., the agency is an unassuming building with a total of 23 people; some are engineers, others work with compliance and enforcement for companies that pollute, and one for air quality monitoring. The agency was created in 1967 after the Washington State Clean Air Act was passed. While the agency does monitor wildfire smoke levels throughout the year, smoke is not the only thing the agency tracks.

“We work primarily with, for lack of a better term, polluters, or sources of air pollution,” Seth Preston says. The agency monitors pollutant levels of small mom and pop stores with gasoline pumps up to large oil refineries like the one in Anacortes. “We do a lot of work with them on permitting and putting limits on how much they can put out of any given substance,” he says.

When it comes to tracking and monitoring wildfire smoke, the agency works with the other clean air agencies as well as the Department of Ecology, the EPA, and health departments in Skagit, Whatcom and Island counties.

“We work with the State Department of Ecology and we also work with the US EPA,” Preston says. The EPA can give the agency authority to act on their behalf in some cases because they are the ones who regulate pollution in the area.

Preston grew up in Sedro-Woolley and doesn’t remember seeing as much wildfire smoke during the summers. The past two years were the worst he has experienced since moving back to Mount Vernon. “It was kind of depressing to just see that yuck out in the air,” he joked, saying yuck is a technical term. “It was bad, probably the worst that they’ve seen around this area.”

For Preston, the 2017 smoke season was worse than the 2018 season. For a 12-day stretch, it was brutally hot while the smoke settled over Mount Vernon. Come August 2018, the smoke drifted in again and settled over the Pacific Northwest for over a week. While it was not as hot as the prior summer, the smoke levels themselves were higher than they were previously.

“Last year it was coming from everywhere,” he says with a mirthless laugh. “We were getting it from Eastern Washington, we were getting it from Canada, we were getting it from California and Oregon. And we even got some out of Siberia because it carried over by the jet stream. It’s unpredictable.”

With Smoke Comes Concern

In 2018, when the wildfire smoke drifted in and caused the air quality levels to rise into the unhealthy range, there was an increase in people calling in or going to a physician for medical advice, Martha Serven says. She is a certified physician assistant at Bellingham Asthma, Allergy and Immunology Clinic near PeaceHealth St. Joseph Hospital.

Serven grew up in Wichita, Kansas and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis. With the desire to experience something different, Serven moved to Spokane, Washington to live with her sister. She then went to the University of Washington to become a PA-C.

When she moved out here, Serven says, she didn’t notice wildfire smoke. She knew that there were some wildfires in eastern Washington but it was not an issue for her at the time. “But just the last three years has been you know, we’ve really noticed that there’s been a problem during the summertime.”

For her job, Serven essentially does what the physician does.

“I see patients,” she says. “I work them up. I order lab work on them and do treatment plans. But I work in consultation with the physicians all of the time.”

Once the wildfire smoke comes in during the summer, Serven says there is little that they can do to mitigate the impact. She recommends her patients stay indoors when the air quality levels are higher than normal and wear a mask if possible when they go outside.

“I think the saddest thing is that what we’re telling people all of the time is to stay indoors during the nicest part of our year,” Serven says. “Anybody who’s got any respiratory problems is probably having to stay inside most of the time.”

Trapped Inside Without Control

Brendan Morrison was very active throughout his childhood and early adult life. He was on intramural teams at Western Washington University for basketball and soccer, and he even played a little bit of dodgeball. Being active and working out was something that made him who he was.

In early July 2015, he started to notice little things were happening to his body. He was struggling to keep up with his normal bike rides or workouts. He was slowing down on things that used to be easy for him and he was no longer improving.

“Up until that point, I was a very active kid, doing sports and all that growing up,” Morrison says. “It just came out of nowhere and started to get progressively worse.”

At first, the doctors thought it was pneumonia. Morrison would be sent home with medicine to treat the symptoms but they would not go away. When Morrison kept coming back, and the prescribed medicine meant to fix his shortness of breath was not working, the doctors realized it was something more than just pneumonia. His symptoms gradually worsened and it got to the point where Morrison needed to carry around an oxygen tank to class.

Then, in August 2018 the smoke settled over Bellingham once again. With Morrison’s mystery illness taking away his ability to be active, the smoke brought his life to a standstill. He was no longer able to walk outside or go to work. Morrison was stuck in his apartment with the windows drawn to keep as much of the smoke away as possible.

“Trying to be outside at all, having that smoke around I definitely noticed the effects of it,” Morrison says. “Taking shallower breaths, having a lot harder time just doing basic things like walking up the stairs.”

As the mystery illness was stripping away parts of Morrison’s ability to do what he wants, exercise, no matter how little, was important to him. But when the smoke took away his ability to drive a mile and a half to his on-campus job or even go out for a small walk, he was stripped of the one thing he could control.

It was just a waiting game until the smoke cleared and his life could return to his new normal.

A Waiting Game

Wildfire smoke is an increasingly visible part of Bellingham’s summer. Hazy skies and smoke filled air is just a nuisance for most people but the day-to-day life of sensitive populations like those with pulmonary and heart problems can be brought to a halt when it settles over the city.

So when it comes again, when the sky is clouded by smoke from wildfires in neighboring states or different countries, we can all take steps to limit exposure and reduce the harmful effects of breathing it in.

The Whatcom County Health Department recommends limiting the time spent outdoors. That can mean forgoing that daily walk around town or choosing to exercise indoors instead of going for a run around Bellingham’s waterfront. They recommend knowing where to find information about the air quality levels in your area and staying informed about what is happening.

Wolpers recommends creating a room in your house that has cleaner air than outside. The air inside will not be completely clean of the particulate matter created by wildfires. But a HEPA filter, a high efficiency particulate air filter than can capture most of the harmful particles, attached to a box fan can make breathing easier. If you need to go outside, wearing a mask if possible will help to reduce the intake of smoke.

Although, just like in Morrison’s experience, the main thing one can do is wait until the smoke finally drifts away and the clear blue skies return.

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