THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
When wildfires rage, the immediate threat is obvious—but smoke from the fires actually kills far more people than the flames.
As fires become more frequent, that smoke is leading to a public health crisis.
In a new study published in the journal Science Advances, we found that wildfire smoke likely contributed to more than 52,000 premature deaths across California alone from 2008 to 2018, with an economic impact from the deaths of more than $430 billion.
Previous studies have examined the short-term health risks from wildfire smoke, but few