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Canadians living in forest fire zones, such as southeastern British Columbia, face a higher risk of cancer than those who do not, according to a study from McGill University.
In one article published this month in the scientific journal Lancet Planet Health, researchers say they studied about 20 years of health data – from 1996 to 2015 – on more than two million people nationwide.
They found that people who had lived within 50 kilometers of a wildfire in the past 10 years were 10 percent more likely to develop brain tumors and five percent more likely to have lung cancer than humans, living further away.
The study did not analyze data on people living in large cities with a population of more than 1.5 million. It also excludes new immigrants and people under the age of 25 or over.
Climate change is exacerbating forest fires
Scientists say they expect climate change to exacerbate forest fires and related health risks from air and water pollution.
In 2018, for example, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had found that drinking water in Paradise, California, was contaminated with benzene, a chemical that causes cancer, after a forest fire in the area in the same year.
Because forest fires typically occur in such regions each year, people living in nearby communities can inhale or drink carcinogenic pollutants from forest fires on a chronic basis, McGill researchers said.
“Many of the pollutants released by forest fires are known human carcinogens, suggesting that exposure may increase the risk of cancer in humans,” said Jill Corsiac, a doctoral student at McGill University and lead author of the study.
When more than 200 wildfires raged in inland British Columbia last summer, some scientists recommended wearing an N95 mask to repel smoke during outdoor activities.
McGill University professor of epidemiology Scott Weichentl, co-author of the article, said that while masks do a great job of filtering out air pollutants, carcinogens can contaminate other things.
“They can also contaminate things like water and soil,” he told CBC host Chris Walker of CBC Daybreak South. “There may be other ways to expose harmful chemicals to the environment.
Weichenthal says his research team plans to conduct further research on how chemical mixtures from forest fires vary throughout the fire season.
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