Pollution from the L.A. fires could linger inside homes for weeks
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A study of Colorado’s Marshall Fire found that the ‘toxic soup’ of pollutants stuck around for weeks. L.A. residents could experience that on an even bigger scale.
When wildfires burn, they release particulate matter, or PM2.5—ultra-fine particles that fill the air with pollution and can penetrate our lungs and bloodstream. But when fires burn through urban areas, as they have been doing across Los Angeles, it’s not only vegetation contributing to that pollution. Entire homes—and all the plastics, metals, and electronics inside them—are going up in flames, resulting in a “toxic soup” of smoke and ash that’s even more dangerous to our health. And those hazardous particles could linger inside homes for much longer than the fires themselves.