HONOLULU– A University of Hawaii study that examined the health effects of last year’s deadly wildfires on Maui found that up to 74% of participants may have had difficulty breathing or had respiratory health problems, and nearly half showed signs of compromised lung function.
The data, collected from 679 people in January and February, comes from what researchers hope will be a long-term study of wildfire survivors lasting at least a decade. The researchers released the first results of that research on Wednesday. They hope to eventually enroll 2,000 people in their study to generate what they call a snapshot of the roughly 10,000 people affected by the fires.
Alika Maunakea, one of the researchers and a professor at the university’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, said those who reported greater wildfire exposure tended to experience more symptoms.
Many study participants did not see a doctor, he said. Some study participants said they were unable to do so because clinics burned down or because they prioritized getting housing, jobs and food after the disaster. Maunakea urged people exposed to the wildfires to get tested.
“There may be some issues that may manifest themselves in the future,” he said. “Please consult your doctor. Just pay more attention to your health because of this.”
Two-thirds of study participants lived in Lahaina at the time of the fires. About half of participants reported daily or weekly exposure to smoke, ash, or debris.
The Aug. 8 fire killed at least 101 people, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century. It burned thousands of buildings, displaced 12,000 residents, and destroyed the historic city of Maui.
The report shows that Maui does not have enough lung health specialists to care for those who will need this knowledge, said Ruben Juarez, a professor of health economics at the university and one of the study’s leaders. Researchers are talking to Hawaii’s congressional delegation to figure out how to get those resources to Maui, he said.
Maunakea said researchers want to avoid the higher cancer and death rates experienced 20 years later by people affected by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“We hope that we will be able to prevent this tragedy from worsening and increasing death rates in the future, as we have seen with other events like 9/11,” Maunakea said.
Dr. Gopal Allada, associate professor of medicine specializing in pulmonary and critical care at Oregon Science & Health University, which was not involved in the study, said it would have been great if study participants had undergone similar lung function tests before the fire. But he acknowledged that this was not possible, as is often the case in similar studies.
He hopes researchers will obtain funding to continue their research over time.
Allada noted that most scientific studies on the health effects of wildfires have focused on what happens to people in the days and weeks of exposure and less is known about the long-term effects.
He praised the researchers for showing there is a problem and for collecting data that can influence policymakers.
“This is important work that hopefully influences policymakers and the people who control budgets, intern training and those kinds of things,” he said.
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