Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, goes the old saying — and Northern California has learned that where there are wildfires, there is smoke, sometimes blankets of irritating, unhealthy smoke. A recent study in the journal Nature Communications concluded that tiny particles in wildfire smoke are up to 10 times as hazardous to human health as similar particles from other sources. In addition to smoke, wildfires have economic and human impacts, and also add massive carbon emissions to the atmosphere, exacerbating climate change in a vicious cycle which may lead to additional wildfires. In our efforts to dampen their size and frequency, reducing the fuel they depend on is proving increasingly critical.
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