The spate of devastating fires hitting the Los Angeles area has dominated headlines and understandably so. At least 10 people have died and upwards of 180,000 people have been evacuated with more than 10,000 structures destroyed. One of these fires, the Palisades Fire, began burning on Tuesday and continues at the time of this writing, has destroyed at least 17,000 acres, the most in Los Angeles history. But there's also the Eaton Fire, the Hurst Fire, the Kenneth Fire and other fires in the area, many with little to no containment.

While hundreds of thousands of Californians are fleeing from flames, there are other risks aside from the immediate damage: air pollution and the charred toxins that are left behind. 

To give one example, a recent study in the journal JAMA Neurology has looked at the effects of wildfire smoke on  dementia. Previous research has established that tiny particles in the air (2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, known as PM2.5) are linked to dementia, but the researchers found that long-term exposure to wildfire smoke specifically “was associated with dementia diagnoses.” They added that as climate change worsens, “interventions focused on reducing wildfire PM2.5 exposure may reduce dementia diagnoses and related inequities.”

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To conduct their research, the scientists looked at health data from more than 1.2 million people from between 2008 and 2019 among members of Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Within this cohort, they discovered “people with higher exposure to wildfire fine particulate matter (PM2.5) had elevated risk of developing dementia,” explained Dr. Joan Casey, the study’s corresponding author and a professor of public health at the University of Washington.

Because this study only examined existing patient data, Casey told Salon that scientists will need to do more research on the precise relationship between wildfire exposure and dementia. “We looked at the umbrella of all dementia diagnoses, but certain sub-types like Alzheimer’s or frontotemporal dementia might have stronger links with wildfire PM2.5,” Casey said. “We also want to understand the relevant........

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