| SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Today, Senator Marie Alvarado-Gil announced her Wildfire Smoke and Health Outcomes Data Act (SB 223) unanimously passed out of the Senate Health Committee. SB 223 would establish a statewide database to track the health impacts of wildfire smoke.
“Addressing this issue is long overdue. Wildfires are a fact of life for all Californians, but the recent Southern California fires made it abundantly clear that we need to understand how wildfire smoke affects our health,” said Senator Alvarado-Gil. “We need accurate data to protect our firefighters, agricultural workers, ranchers, and rural communities. This bill is a critical step toward making informed decisions around forest management and public health.”
The California Council of Science and Technology (CCST) reports that California policymakers currently lack the data needed to determine whether investments in forest health and wildfire risk reduction are improving health outcomes for communities affected by smoke. SB 223 would require the state to do the following:
· Regularly update data products tracking air pollution concentrations from wildfire smoke, population exposure, and cases of adverse health outcomes related to smoke.
· Expand available smoke data products to include estimates of smoke impacts by individual wildfires. Tracking smoke impacts back to source fires is foundational data for research on the potential human health benefits of alternative forest management strategies.
· Support efforts to create methodological guidelines for estimating smoke air pollutant concentrations and counts of adverse health impacts attributable to wildfire smoke in order to facilitate future research efforts.
· Support the development of methodologies to estimate smoke emissions from human made materials and should expand smoke emissions inventories to additionally include emissions estimates from developed landscapes that are burned by wildfires.
This bill is a reintroduction of Senator Alvarado-Gil’s SB 945 from last year, which was killed after she switched parties. “Reintroducing SB 223 is my commitment to making sure we as legislators have the data we need to address the health impacts of wildfire smoke, and strengthen our approach to wildfire policy,” Alvarado-Gil concluded. |
