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As wildfires become commonplace in the western United States and around the world, checking daily for air quality warnings has become as common as checking the weather. But what people do with that data – whether it prompts them to don a mask before going outside or to seal their homes against smoke – isn’t always straightforward or rational, according to new research from Stanford.
In a case study of residents of northern California, researchers at Stanford explored the psychological factors and social processes that determine responses to smoke from wildfires. The research, which ultimately aims to uncover approaches to help people protect themselves better, shows that social norms and social support are essential for understanding protective actions for health during forest fires. The results appeared this month in the newspaper Climate risk management.
“It is important to understand how people behave so that public health communication professionals can potentially step in and promote safer behavior that mitigates risk,” said lead study author Francisca Santana, PhD student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER). “This type of qualitative work is a first step so that we can learn how people use information and interact to make decisions. We can then look at where there might be leverage points or opportunities to promote more behavior. protective.”
Exposure to smoke from wildfires can irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, impact the immune system and increase susceptibility to lung infections, including the virus that causes COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While other studies have looked at how people respond to evacuation orders, little has been done to understand what happens with exposure to smoke from wildfires if people don’t – or can’t. – leave the area, according to lead author of the study Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, assistant professor of earth system science at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth ).
“It resonated with me, the things people were doing to try to protect themselves without access to effective ways to reduce their exposure to wildfire smoke,” Wong-Parodi said, referring to to a resident who breathed through a wet bandana in an attempt to filter out toxic smoke particles. “We urgently need to develop realistic strategies for what people are going through. “
Study authors Santana and David Gonzalez, who worked on the study as a doctoral student at Stanford, interviewed residents of all ages, races and incomes who were affected by smoke from the 2018 camp fires. that destroyed Paradise, Calif., and the fires that followed in 2019 in Fresno, Santa Clara and Sacramento counties.
They found that people reacted to wildfires in three main ways: interpreting information together, protecting other vulnerable people, and questioning protective actions. Their responses were influenced not only by the Air Quality Index (AQI), but also by what they experienced personally – whether they smell, see or taste smoke in the air.
Equally important were the social factors at play, the researchers found. “Social norms and social support really influenced how people chose to act based on their perception of the threat,” Santana said. “For example, a lot of people have talked about observing others wearing masks, and in some cases that observation was enough for them to act by wearing a mask themselves.”
Their discussions revealed that the rules or norms of behavior shared within a social group – social norms – were a common path leading to behavior change, in addition to the act of helping or comforting others in the process. within your social group – social support.
“There were only a handful of people who described watching the IQA and then changing their behavior based on it – it was almost always a conversation they had with each other,” Santana said. “It was really a social exercise of making sense of limited information or information that was not at the right scale for their community.”
The study provides a framework to better understand responses to smoke from forest fires by examining social processes while recognizing that cultural and political contexts, as well as factors such as demographics, health status and previous exposure to smoke and air pollution, can also influence individual behavior.
In the western United States, climate change has contributed to the risk and extent of wildfires, bringing smoke to areas like the Bay Area, which has historically been less affected than the rest of the United States. State. In some cases, researchers found that residents were unable to protect themselves because they could not access N95 masks or air purifiers or properly seal their homes.
“This research is also important for epidemiologists trying to understand how smoke from wildfires affects health,” said Gonzalez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. “It can help us examine the disparities between those exposed to smoke and determine whether it causes poor health for certain populations.”
As these events become more frequent, it may be possible to find policy synergies that help prepare communities for future smoke-related events, according to the co-authors. For example, programs designed to improve household comfort and increase energy efficiency could also include measures to reduce smoke intrusion during forest fires, Wong-Parodi suggested.
Some of the interviews revealed that residents just don’t know what to do when they experience a new extreme event. But even that revealed how dealing with uncertainty is a social exercise, not just a cognitive one.
“This article shows that social norms can be an effective lever to encourage the pro-health change that we would like to see,” said Wong-Parodi. “This is actually a very promising sign to think about how to adapt and mitigate our risks as we face increasing threats from climate change.”
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