News Release

Wildfires that keep us inside might drive the spread of infectious disease, per study of the U.S. West Coast wildfires of 2020

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

Wildfires that keep us inside might drive the spread of infectious disease, per study of the U.S. West Coast wildfires of 2020

image: 

Air Quality level during the West Coast wildfire season in 2020. (a) Air Quality Index extracted for PM2.5 particle pollution for all counties in Oregon (OR), Washington (WA), and California (CA). Horizontal line at 150 indicates the Air Quality Index (AQI) threshold for health concerns; (b) The map highlights in dark red the most affected counties in Oregon (OR) and Washington (WA) that were included in our study. The orange counties represent unaffected areas used as a baseline. Both affected and unaffected counties are part of the Northern Indoor Seasonality Cluster (in dark grey). Base layer: https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/GENZ2020/shp/cb_2020_us_county_20m.zip. 

Shift in human behaviors due to wildfire smoke.

The figure shows the indoor activity seasonality index between July 1, 2020, and November, 01, 2020 in the 10 selected affected counties: Multnomah County (Portland City), Washington County, Clackamas County, Lane County, Marion County in Oregon state, and King County (Seattle city), Spokane County, Yakima County, Clark County, Thurston County in Washington state. In each subplot, we also show in yellow the median and 95% CI of the indoor activity seasonality index for the unaffected counties that we used as a baseline. The violet curves represent the AQI of the affected counties during the studied period.  

 view more 

Credit: Image Credit: Arregui-García et al., 2025, PLOS Climate, CC-BY 4.0

Wildfires that keep us inside might drive the spread of infectious disease, per study of the U.S. West Coast wildfires of 2020, highlighting indirect health impacts of extreme weather events.

###

Article URL: https://plos.io/4mXg1FC

Article Title: Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens

Author Countries: Denmark, France, Italy, Spain, United States  

Funding: Research reported in this publication was supported by the Fritz-Family fellowship program to SB and GP. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. GP received her salary from the Fritz-Family fellowship program.

Journal

PLOS Climate

DOI

10.1371/journal.pclm.0000542

Article Title

Disruption of outdoor activities caused by wildfire smoke shapes circulation of respiratory pathogens

COI Statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.