The study, published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health, is the first to examine the relationship between wildfire smoke and asthma in the Northeast—which in recent years has seen a marked increase in poor air quality days due to wildfires.
“In the summer of 2023, my pediatric pulmonology team received a high volume of phone calls from concerned parents saying, ‘My child is having trouble with asthma symptoms,’” says paper co-author Keith Robinson, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics at UVM and a pediatric pulmonologist at Golisano Children’s Hospital.
The researchers didn’t find the same signal when they compared 2023 with 2024, which was surprising, and the team hopes future research could shed light on why. Still, Robinson says it’s clear that wildfire smoke is affecting Vermont’s youth.
“I think our findings suggest that there is potential for wildfire smoke, even hundreds of miles away, to impact a child’s health,” he says.
The study was funded by UVM’s Planetary Health Initiative and brought researchers together from across UVM, the Robert Larner M.D. College of Medicine, and UVM Health.
The research team also included lead author Anna Maassel, a Ph.D. candidate at the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, graduate fellow at the Gund Institute for Environment; Taylor Ricketts, director of UVM’s Gund Institute for Environment; Paige Brochu, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in the Rubenstein School, director of UVM’s Spatial Analysis Laboratory, and a Gund Institute affiliate; Valerie Harder, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at UVM and a researcher at the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program; and Stephen Teach, M.D., professor of emergency medicine at UVM and a pediatric emergency medicine physician at University of Vermont Health.
Read full story at Vermont Public
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