The threat of air pollution and toxic exposure has faded from the American consciousness since the 1980s, when toxic exposure in Love Canal, New York, and Times Beach, Missouri, dominated headlines. Now, we are facing new risks, as climate-driven disasters mobilize the man-made compounds that make up our household products, furniture, and the very buildings we live in. Those same disasters are bringing the waste from our industrial past back to the surface.
From Los Angeles, Inside Climate News investigates the hazards left behind by urban wildfires, and asks what are the consequences of these toxins driven by climate change? What is in the ash and debris littering the burn scars and surrounding area, and how much of a risk does it pose to Angelenos?
Wildfires now account for a third of U.S. air pollution. That means most of us are breathing, eating, and living in particles of the over 86,000 anthropogenic compounds that define modern life; the risks aren’t contained to the West Coast.
This project, The Toxic Side of Climate Change, brings climate exposures to the personal level, using person-centered storytelling to contextualize what we have learned about the long-term health consequences of exposure to contamination from smoke and ash.
