UCLA Fielding-led team trains construction workers on respirator use in aftermath of 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires

A team led by UCLA Fielding School of Public Health experts has trained more than 300 construction workers as part of the state’s response to the 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires.

The project, funded by the California State Department of Public Health (CDPH), has trained workers – including many temporary workers, day laborers, and domestic workers - who otherwise have little or no experience dealing with the mix of potentially toxic debris left after a major wildfire, experts said.

“We know many workers are not provided appropriate respiratory protection and the associated training by their employers, and so we're stepping in to provide services to these workers,” said Dr. Rachael Jones, professor and chair of the UCLA Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences. “These are people that perform work where they may be required to wear respirators, for example, but are not being provided with that equipment by their employer. Many of the people we’re serving have informal employment arrangements, and sometimes it's because the employers just don't want to provide the required services.”

The January blazes in Los Angeles County, in both the Pacific Palisades-Malibu area adjacent to the Santa Monica Mountains and the Altadena-Pasadena communities in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, claimed at least 31 lives and damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures, County officials said. In both cases, the fires released a complex mix of particulate matter and volatile organic compounds from burned structures and vehicles, a different mix of contaminants than are released by a typical brushfire. Debris removal, demolition, and construction stir ups dust and other contaminants, creating further exposure risks for workers.

“After the fires, we knew that dusty conditions during clean-up activities would pose a hazard to workers. It was important that workers understood the health risks and had well-fitting respirators to protect themselves,” said Dr. Kristin Cummings, chief of CDPH’s Occupational Health Branch. “For workers in informal employment arrangements, such as day laborers, access to training, respirators, and fit testing is very limited. We partnered with the team at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health because of the team’s expertise in respiratory protection, experience delivering training and fit testing to Spanish-speaking workers, and established relationships with community-based organizations that are trusted by the workers we needed to reach.”

The project started on an emergency basis in late June, and the team has held training and fit testing sessions across Los Angeles County, with a focus on communities where workers are being recruited for fire-related debris clean-up, smoke remediation, and reconstruction projects in both disaster areas; by Labor Day, the team will have trained from 300-350 workers on how to use the equipment, as well as screening them for any health problems that would be exacerbated by wearing respiratory protective equipment.

“In order to wear respirators, you have to be fit-tested to make sure that you're wearing the correct respirator for your face, and that you are medically qualified to wear one,” said Veronica Ponce de Leon, an industrial hygiene expert with responsibilities for outreach, education, and technical assistance on the team. “There’s a real need here, to make sure that if people are going to be receiving the equipment, it’s done appropriately, so they can wear the respirator safely.”

The UCLA Fielding team includes faculty and staff from the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) and the Southern California Education and Research Center (SCERC); along with Jones and Ponce de Leon, among the trainers at a recent session at a day labor center in Pomona was Lizbeth Diaz, with expertise in industrial hygiene and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Hazardous Waste Operation and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training.

“It’s worth keeping in mind that exposures in our personal lives, and at work, are connected and impact our overall well-being. It’s important that we know what we are being exposed to in the workplace and how we should protect ourselves,” Diaz said. “If we do develop an illness, it helps us have a better understanding of what the cause may be.”

At UCLA Fielding, a focus on environmental health research combined with practical, real-world education and training policies to improve workplace safety and reduce exposures to toxic substances goes back more than six decades, to the earliest days of the school.

“Learning about dangers to workers, and how to prevent them, has been essential to prevent harm to everyone,” said Dr. Richard Jackson, a physician and professor emeritus at UCLA Fielding and a veteran of federal and state health positions. “Many hazards we think of as environmental were first found by learning what hurts workers, and this is true of pesticides, dyes, metals, dusts, and radiation.”

For Jones and the other members of the team, the impact of their work, both as pure research and the training initiatives and policy changes it supports, are very real.

“For those of us who are worried about our health, we maintain our diet and exercise, but the one thing we can't really control are the environments we find ourselves in,” said Jones, who worked in agriculture and the oil industry before becoming a scientist. “Even if we are maintaining our own healthy lifestyle, our health is impacted by the work environment and outdoor environment we live in, and in ways that are beyond our control.”

Funding and Organizational Support

The training contract is California Department of Public Health Emergency Contract PATS Project: 20255098. Project execution is by the staff of the UCLA Fielding School’s UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health (COEH) and the Southern California Education and Research Center (SCERC); SCERC is funded by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Grant T42OH008412.