As the winds ease and the flames are quenched, Los Angeles area residents are returning to neighborhoods charred beyond recognition by recent wildfires.
The residents are also returning to a dangerous accumulation of toxics, according to a Northeastern University environmental health expert.
“Every possible kind of toxic you can imagine is there and in more concentrated form,” Phil Brown, university distinguished professor and the director of the Social Science Environmental Health Research Institute at Northeastern University says. “It’s much more bioavailable — which means it’s easier for people to get it into their bodies.”
At least 28 people have died across the Los Angeles area after multiple wildfires fueled by dry conditions and powerful winds erupted Jan. 7. Nearly 17,000 structures have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have been forced from their homes as a result of the blazes.
Rain this past weekend aided firefighters’ efforts, and three major wildfires in Los Angeles county were nearly 100% contained after the wet weather.
Residents are now returning to what remains.
Brown says they will find a toxic mess.
“Here you have enormous numbers of products in the homes that are full of toxics of one form or another — old lead paint; asbestos in old houses that are lining pipes; enormous amounts of electronics with toxic substances; flame retardants used in building products, couches, chairs, textiles and clothing; heavy metals from the fire suppressants themselves, etc. — there was an endless stream of products there that would get vaporized and burn.”
In a vaporized state, the toxics are more likely to be inhaled into the body, Brown says, or they may be carried by the hurricane-force winds to areas far from their origin.
Not that the ashy, dusty detritus is better.
Brown says the toxics are most concentrated in the debris and the ash, as nontoxic elements burn off to leave the toxics behind. With the recent rain, the ash could also wash into the ground and into the local water supply, further spreading and endangering health, Brown says.
So, what can be done?Brown says that past environmental disasters — for example, coal ash floods in Appalachia, 9-11, and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — provide a model for how to respond.
“We have to get crews of scientists in there really quickly — exposure scientists and toxicologists — to measure what’s there in terms of toxics and monitor them over time,” Brown says. “We need to find existing toxic waste disposal sites and create new ones because there are never enough of them, and we need to train lots of new emergency workers who do this kind of cleanup of contaminated sites.”
Brown also recommends that toxics experts and scientists implement rigorous testing and monitoring of toxics to ensure that residents are returning to safe areas.
Additional changes — from utilities removing brush rather than killing it with toxic herbicides to new building codes that emphasize less toxics in the building supply chain to restrictions on building in wildfire-prone areas — are more long term, Brown says.
“We really have to really generate an entire new approach to how we build things and the things we manufacture,” Brown says.
Coupled with an existing regional housing shortage, threats to eliminate or overhaul the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a federal funding pause that includes a freeze on activities of the National Institutes of Health rapid response program that responds to such environmental disasters, and thousands of people eager to return to their properties and pick up the pieces, Brown says the wildfire cleanup couldn’t come at a worse time.
“It’s going to take many, many years,” Brown says of the recovery.