Wildfire smoke is eroding decades of air quality improvements, study finds

Stanford study: Wildfire smoke reverses air quality gains

(KRON) -- Wildfire smoke has slowed down or reversed America's progress toward achieving better air quality, a study by researchers with Stanford University found. By spewing plumes of smoke laden with tiny toxic particles, called PM2.5, wildfires have a "rapidly growing influence" over air quality trends in at least 35 states, according to the study published this week. Victories toward improving air quality over the past two decades were eras…

Worsening Wildfire Smoke Is Wiping Out Decades of Progress on Air Pollution

Climate change and poor land management are key factors behind the increase in U.S. wildfire pollution.

How wildfire smoke is erasing years of progress toward cleaning up America’s air

Over the last few decades, air in the U.S. has undergone a remarkable transformation: pollution levels of health-damaging tiny particles have dropped by roughly 40% since 2000, primarily thanks to the country’s decades-long effort to improve air quality through the Clean Air Act, a landmark environmental law.Smoke from wildfires fueled by human-driven climate change, however, has erased roughly 25% of those air quality gains, according to a new …

The contribution of wildfire to PM2.5 trends in the USA

Steady improvements in ambient air quality in the USA over the past several decades, in part a result of public policy1,2, have led to public health benefits1–4. However, recent trends in ambient concentrations of particulate matter with diameters less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5), a pollutant regulated under the Clean Air Act1, have stagnated or begun to reverse throughout much of the USA5. Here we use a combination of ground- and satellite-ba…

Wildfires are destroying decades of clean air efforts in the U.S.

Increases in wildfire smoke are reversing decades of improvements to air quality in some parts of the U.S., according to new research.

Wildfire smoke is reversing years of air pollution progress

New Stanford study shows fires are increasingly to blame for bad air, particularly in California and the West