Science | "After wildfires burned houses and brush alike in Los Angeles, researchers have mobilized to understand the health risks posed by urban conflagrations"

Science interviewed Dr. Rachael M. Jones and Dr. Yifang Zhu, both professors in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Department of Environmental Health Sciences, about their work on the L.A. Fire HEALTH Study.

"... At a laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), industrial hygienist Rachael Jones is seeing whether filter cartridges from different respirators can meet the first of those requirements.

Usually, such filters are tested with a single type of chemical, but Jones is exposing them to a brew of chemicals like those from wildfire that burns houses as well as vegetation.

'We’re trying to really overload the cartridges,' she said as she stood near a contraption that looked like a cross between a wood stove and a plastic maze built to entertain hamsters."

Also referenced by Science were Zhu, Fielding School student researcher Bella Chen, and Derek Urwin, a UCLA chemist and Los Angeles County firefighter who is collaborating with Jones. The team also includes the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health's Dr. David Eisenman, Dr. Michael Jerrett, and Dr. Katherine McNamara, as well as scientists from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Zhu was also quoted by Science.

"... 'It’s a big team,' proclaimed Yifang Zhu, an air pollution expert at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), as she stood in the driveway (of a damaged home) one day in February. 'It’s great that everyone came.'

'Something good has to come out of this mess,' replied the homeowner, who asked not to be named."

Read the Science article