Smoke from wildfires may send people – particularly seniors – to hospital emergency rooms (ERs) with heart, stroke-related complaints, according to new research in the Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.
Previous studies have shown that wildfire smoke exacerbates respiratory conditions but yielded inconsistent results for effects on the heart, brain or blood vessels.
The study was the product of a collaboration between researchers at the University of California San Francisco, California Department of Public Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers reviewed more than one million ER visits in northern and central California during intense wildfires in the summer of 2015. They examined the relative risk of daily heart-, brain- and blood vessel-related ER visits on light, medium and dense smoke days relative to days without wildfire smoke exposure.
They found that smoke exposure was associated with increased rates of ER visits, not just for breathing trouble, but also ischemic heart disease, irregular heart rhythm, heart failure, pulmonary embolism and stroke. The risk was greatest for adults age 65 and older.
Read more at American Heart Association
Photo Credit: Mike Lewelling, National Park Service via Wikimedia Commons
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