For how we live.
A 34-million-birth analysis maps how far smoke travels from the fires that make it. A companion review is blunt that what that exposure does, beyond the lungs, is still unsettled.
Synchronous fire weather more than doubled in most regions between 1979 and 2024, and over half the increase is attributed to human-caused climate change. A separate paper prices the smoke.
A 4.5-million-birth analysis found smoke exposure associated with higher birth weight, not lower. A separate cohort linked third-trimester smoke days to autism risk — but only when counting days, not concentration.
Cedars-Sinai counted a 118% rise in general-illness visits and a 46% rise in heart attack visits over the 90 days after the fires started. Abnormal blood results more than doubled.
Berkeley researchers followed older Californians for a decade. Cumulative smoke exposure predicted death better than the number of smoke days did — which is not how air quality is usually reported.
A November systematic review screened 120 publications and found five eligible papers, all from the US and Canada. All pointed the same way; none could be pooled with the others.
One projects 71,420 US deaths a year from wildfire smoke by 2050. The other projects 1.4 million globally by the end of the century, with Africa's burden rising elevenfold. Both rest on modelled chains, not observations.