Wildfire smoke PM2.5 accounted for about 24,100 all-cause deaths\/year in the contiguous United States<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter<\/b>
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WEDNESDAY, Feb. 11, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Wildfire smoke fine particulate matter (PM2.5<\/sub>) has a long-term impact on mortality and is associated with an increased mortality rate for all studied outcomes, according to a study published online Feb. 4 in Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n Min Zhang, Ph.D., from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, and colleagues estimated the effects of annual exposure to wildfire smoke PM2.5<\/sub> on all-cause and cause-specific mortality in the contiguous United States from 2006 to 2020 using a doubly robust method, incorporating flexible generalized propensity score estimation that captured potential nonlinearity and interactions among confounders and relaxed the distribution form assumption for exposure.<\/p>\n The researchers found that for all studied outcomes except for deaths from transport accidents or falls, which served as negative outcome controls, wildfire smoke PM2.5<\/sub> was associated with an increased mortality rate. In the contiguous United States, wildfire smoke PM2.5<\/sub> was responsible for about 24,100 all-cause deaths per year. There was a monotonic increase in the exposure-response curve for all-cause mortality, with no evidence of a “safe” threshold. Of the six cause-specific outcomes, the greatest increase per 0.1-\u00b5g\/m3<\/sup> increase in smoke PM2.5<\/sub> exposure was seen for neurological disease mortality.<\/p>\n “This study shows that long-term exposure to PM2.5 <\/sub>from wildfire smoke poses a growing and serious threat to public health nationwide,” Zhang said in a statement.<\/p>\n