On Sept. 9, 2020, smoke from multiple wildfires turned the sky above the San Francisco Bay area orange. But it wasn’t just colorful… it was harmful to Bay area residents’ skin.
Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP via Getty Images
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Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP via Getty Images
On Sept. 9, 2020, smoke from multiple wildfires turned the sky above the San Francisco Bay area orange. But it wasn’t just colorful… it was harmful to Bay area residents’ skin.
Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP via Getty Images
Raj Fadadu was still in medical school on the day the sky turned orange.
“I remember waking up for my class … I was like, ‘Oh, is this just a really intense sunrise? But no, the entire sky was just like this deep, dark orange color, and it persisted for like, hours on end,” Fadadu says. “And it just really felt like, ‘Is this the last day on earth?'”
But it wasn’t the apocalypse. It was air pollution … caused by smoke from multiple wildfires ravaging the west coast.
“I feel like as climate change has progressed throughout my youth and adulthood, I’m seeing how a lot of the damage is done to the environment or harming human health — and one of the ways that’s happening is through the generation of air pollution,” says Fadadu, who is now a resident physician in dermatology at the University of San Diego. “But there hasn’t really been a lot of study on air pollution and skin disease.”
That is, until Fadadu and his professor, Maria Wei, a dermatologist at the University of San Francisco, decided to fill that gap.
Their work – a first-of-its-kind study on the association between wildfire smoke and atopic dermatitis, a type of eczema. The research paved the way for a number of new studies on air pollution and its impacts on skin health.
Eczema – a chronic condition that causes itchy, dry, painful skin – affects around 2.6 percent of people worldwide and ten percent of people in the United States. While not contagious, it can be triggered by chemical irritants, like in soap or detergent, allergens like dust or pollen, or even stress. Now, thanks to Wei and Fadadu, medical researchers can add wildfire smoke to the list.
“It was a little shocking and disturbing to find this result because, you know, I was maybe hoping that people who had a short amount of air pollution exposure wouldn’t be too significantly impacted. But instead, we did find that even this kind of short-term exposure did impact skin disease,” Fadadu said.
As climate change worsens and wildfires become more frequent, it’s likely those health issues will too. But Fadadu is hopeful that a growing body of research on the topic will help doctors develop medical interventions and advocate for better climate policy.
Interested in hearing more about climate change and human health? Email us at shortwave@npr.org — we’d love to hear your feedback!
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This episode was produced by Rachel Carlson. It was edited by Rebecca Ramirez. Hannah Chinn, Rachel and Rebecca checked the facts. Kwesi Lee was the audio engineer.