VIDEOS: In the hours and days after the Los Angeles fires sparked on Jan. 7, many were smelling and breathing in some of the smoke that was pumped into the sky. For firefighters who were working long hours on the frontline, they were breathing in a lot more of that smoke. A Harvard researcher who is taking part in the L.A. Fire Health study – a massive collaboration project studying the impacts of the fires – has found some of the toxins that were in that smoke in the blood of firefighters.
Dr. Kari Nadeau, chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was able to collect blood samples from 20 Northern California firefighters who came down to Southern California to help battle the Eaton and Palisades fires. Those blood samples were collected just days after the fires sparked. Nadeau says her preliminary testing shows those firefighters had on average lead levels in their blood five times greater than a control group. Their mercury levels were three times greater.
