What does wildfire smoke do to us?

By Amanda Marcotte

As climate change fuels record wildfire seasons, UM researchers are adopting more precise ways to measure the smoke’s impact on our health.

The AirSAFE Lab, opening later this year, will be Canada’s first multidisciplinary research centre on the topic. Scientists will drill down on details like how smoke can, surprisingly, worsen as it moves away from the hot spot, picking up other pollutants. The facility will use actual human lung tissue.

“It’s far more complicated than what I first imagined when I got the idea to do this,” says Andrew Halayko [MSc/88, PhD/97], who is a Canada Research Chair in Lung Pathobiology and Treatment.

What we already know about the effects of wildfire smoke: it commonly causes itchy eyes, runny nose, cough and headache. It can even lead to strokes, heart attacks, lung cancer and infertility, as well as trigger symptoms for people with chronic diseases. 

The national monitoring system we have now—the Air Quality Health Index—is good but it’s based on science from decades ago, says Halayko, who is a co-lead at the lab with Neeloffer Mookherjee, an internal medicine professor in the Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. He says the lab can help modernize this index. 

They plan on doing air quality assessments on living cells in real time to give data to the public about how the air affects them on a given day. Halayko hopes this groundbreaking work will finally allow him to answer the question he gets asked most by the public: should I let my kids go out and play today?

Parents want to know if exposure will result in issues down the road.

“We don’t know the answer to this,” says Halayko. “We have a generation of kids that will have been exposed in utero through to the rest of their lives.”

At a molecular level, smoke particulate hits the lining of the lungs and triggers the immune system and that leads to inflammation. Halayko says pollutants in smoke can thicken mucous and narrow airways, making it harder to breathe.

“Mucous is gross to the average person, but to me mucous is an indispensable suit of armour that lines our airways and catches the particulates that we inhale,” says Halayko.

Some pollutants in the smoke can even paralyze the hair-like cilia in the lungs. Cilia beat in unison to move mucous up toward the mouth where we often swallow it or sometimes cough. Halayko calls cilia the "mucous escalator." When that process is compromised, it makes it harder to breathe. 

Engineers are installing a diesel engine and a biomass burner (like a high-tech wood-burning stove) with a system of flues that will allow outside air in. Air, smoke and other pollutants will then pass over the real human lung tissue. 

Halayko says they’ll be able to look at how smoke affects lung function, changes mucous and cilia, and impacts breathing. One of the wonders of the lab, Halayko explains, will be having the technology to recreate different kinds of smoke. They can simulate forest and grass fires and also play with the heat.

“We can control the smoulder,” he says.

Smoke changes as it moves through the air so they have a special instrument that allows them to dial up its age. Smoke at the site of a fire is different than smoke that has travelled a distance and been exposed to other pollutants and time.

Another angle to consider: what happens when vegetation from polluted areas goes up in smoke? Halayko gives the example of a forest fire near Flin Flon, Man., where decades of smelting and mining has contaminated the area with metals. 

So far, the variations between fires in pristine areas and areas where there is human industry have not been tracked. 

“We don’t know the answers to those questions.”

The AirSAFE lab, located on UM’s Bannatyne campus, is in partnership with the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba and will bring together biomedical, engineering, natural science and occupational health experts.