Science in the Spotlight: Air quality, smoke, and the health impacts of wildfire
U.S. Forest Service via Wikimedia Commons
3:00 – 4:00 pm MDT
Amid the most recent wildfire season across the United States, the effects from wildfires are top of mind for many. Wildfires have major impacts on society, including loss of lives, economic and property damage, and increased levels of smoke that affects our health.
In this first of two Explorer Series Conversations on wildfire, NSF NCAR scientist Forrest Lacey will share his latest research and insights on air quality and the far reaching health impacts of wildfires.
Forrest Lacey
Forrest Lacey is a Mechanical/Environmental Engineer whose work advances the understanding of the formation, fate, and impacts of trace pollutants on human health and other societally impactful systems. With a background in engineering and expertise in atmospheric composition modeling, Dr. Lacey has developed and applied several atmospheric models (including MUSICA, MPAS-A and WRF-Chem) to estimate exposures of pollutants such as NO2, ozone and PM2.5 at scales relevant to human health, revealing how model assumptions shape disease burden estimates. His research spans multiple disciplines, integrating physical and social sciences to examine both traditional all-cause health outcomes and emerging links between air quality and other lesser-studied linkages including those spanning mental health and kidney disease. He also has expertise in modeling and attributing impacts to source-sectors with a focus on wildfires, residential emissions, and transportation-related air pollution. Collectively, his work informs public health strategies and environmental policy by linking model-based pollutant exposures to tangible human outcomes while expanding the scope of diseases and contexts considered in air pollution research