Residents exposed to wildfire smoke have higher dementia risk, study finds

Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health Get our free Health Check email Get our free Health Check email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Now, in an 11-year study of more than 1.2 million Kaiser Permanente members in Southern California ages 60 and up, a group of doctors from around the country said that rates of dementia rose significantly among residents who had been frequently exposed to wildfire smoke over a three-year-long period. “Anthropogenic climate change has increased wildfire frequency and intensity, eroding gains in air quality achieved under the Clean Air Act in the Western US.” open image in gallery A person looks on as smoke and flames billow from the Mountain Fire in Santa Paula, California, earlier this month. Fire weather has continued into November this year These findings come after California saw its fourth-largest wildfire in history this summer, and red flag warnings and other risks have continued into November and across the drought-covered U.S. A study published earlier in the year found that pollution in smoke produced by climate change-fueled wildfires has killed nearly 12,000 more people around the world in recent years compared to decades ago. “This indicates that climate change is increasingly posing a threat to public health, driven by more fire smoke even affecting densely populated areas,” Chae Yeon Park, a researcher at the Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and the lead author of the research, said.