California's wildfire season is becoming longer with more extreme fires due to climate change. This means more smoke being launched into the air causing detrimental effects to people's health, most notably, those who live in unhealthy, high-poverty neighborhoods. In a recent KALW broadcast, reporter Lee Romney spoke with an intelligent and impassioned mother-daughter pair about their experiences. 

 “You have permission to be a couch potato," says AQRC Director Tony Wexler. Recent wildfires across the state of California have caused ash to rain down on cities miles away from evacuation zones. The haze from these fires is a result of tiny particles in the air clouding our views. Director Wexler along with Dr. Mary Prunicki, director of air pollution and health research at Stanford University’s Sean N. Parker Center for Asthma and Allergy Research, advises everyone to stay indoors as much as possible while the fires rage across the state. 

While the wildfires roaring throughout the state of California are producing smoke which affects people for miles on end, the good news is COVID-19 is not carried within that smoke. Listen to Johnny D'Agostini of iHeart Radio SF discuss with  Director Wexler the connecting effects of COVID-19 and wildfire smoke. 

In the age of information, it’s often difficult to filter facts from noise. In this episode of Elanco’s Rediscovering the Power of Healthy Animals podcast with Michelle Calvo-Lorenzo and Sarah Place, CLEAR Center Director, Frank Mitloehner, debunks common misconceptions around livestock and greenhouse gas emissions.

UC Davis professor Dr. Christopher Cappa with several inter-campus colleagues has developed a new virtual series on the Frontiers in Atmospheric Chemistry. They have recruited a mix of junior and senior faculty members from across North America to  present on research results pertaining to atmospheric chemistry. The sessions will take place every Friday through the Fall semester over Zoom at 10am PT starting on September 11th.

A recent collaborative study between Harvard and UC Davis produced data backing the notion that nanoparticles (NP) more frequently crossed the air-blood lung barrier to the rest of the body in infant rats than adults. Fascinatingly, this higher permeability demonstrates immature lungs do not follow the same directives as mature lungs. 

At the 2018 American Thoracic Society International Conference, UC Davis researcher, Dr. Laura Van Winkle and Dr. Kent Pinkerton participated in a cross-disciplinary evaluation of the evidence gathered over 30 years concerning the potential for outdoor air pollution to contribute to the onset of new airway disease.

A recent study by the University of Leeds and the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen divulged PM2.5 had only a small reduction across China and it was not lowered at all in Northeast China. The PM2.5 reduction of 11% across China was disappointing in comparison to the reduction 27% of NO2 across China.  

In a KCRA 3 article, the UC Davis Air Quality research Center's Director, Anthony Wexler, explains why we have been experiencing much better air quality currently. 

“There’s very little traffic compared to what there normally is, and so there’s much less emissions from cars and trucks than there normally are,” Wexler said. “That gives us this blessing at this time where we need as many blessings as we can get. It gives us the blessing of wonderful air quality.”