Brendan Borrell from the New York Times recently visited researchers from the LA Fire HEALTH Study as they monitored air quality in the Altadena burn zones.

“I can’t imagine coming back to this,” said Albert Kyi, a graduate student researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, briefly looking up from his laptop and out the van’s window.

He and his colleagues, however, were there to help people learn whether it was safe to do just that. A mast poking out from the van’s roof was sending readings on hundreds of compounds in the air to the laptop. This laboratory on wheels was so sensitive, Mr. Kyi said, that it could detect the chemicals produced by someone peeling an orange outside.

The data the team was gathering was part of a newly launched study tracking the health impacts of the Los Angeles wildfires over the next decade. By traversing the 38,000 acres that encompass the two burn zones in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades along with the surrounding region, the researchers hope to fill gaps in the data on air, soil and water quality. Already, they have found cause for concern.

Read the full story in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/well/los-angeles-fires-health.html