CU study looks at health impacts of prescribed burns

DENVER — Prescribed burns are one way to mitigate what happened in Colorado last week when four fires burned thousands of acres on the Front Range, but they are not without health concerns. 

A study being conducted by researchers at the Colorado School of Public Health at the University of Colorado is taking a deeper dive into those worries. 

“We have heard from experts that we need to be doing more prescribed burning,” said Katie Dickinson, Ph.D, an associate professor at the Colorado School of Public Health. “If we’re going to be doing more prescribed burning, we need to have more information about how it affects communities living near burning in order to mitigate those risks.” 

Dickinson and her team of researchers are taking a closer look into those health concerns. Over the last year, they have gone out with agencies conducting prescribed burns and collected data on the impact they have on air quality and lung heath. 

Research assistant Sean Benjamin helped create air quality monitors that he places outside and inside the homes of participants who live near prescribed burns. The monitors are placed in areas participants are often in such as kitchens, bedrooms and dens. 

“I think we’re at 11 burns right now that we’ve been able to test for,” he explained. “We’ll see some smoke from a fire come to a house — it’ll be in our outdoor monitor and shortly after we’ll see smaller but increasing spikes in indoor monitors  and sometimes the response from cooking is higher impact than what we’re seeing from prescribed fires.” 

Benjamin’s work on the study goes hand in hand with Carla Nyquist’s duties. She tracks the health of the residents near the burns. Breathing tests, also called spirometry, are given to participants. Those individuals are also required to fill out questionnaires regularly so researchers can analyze any other changes. 

“Just trying to make them feel like they can have safety and comfort in the places they live is really important,” Nyquist said. 

Nyquist knows safety is key for many Colorado residents, especially after 2012 when a prescribed burn lost control and created the Lower North Fork fire.

Those involved in this study hope it shows the bigger picture of what these burns can do for this state. 

“When we started seeing smoke from the NCAR fire, they were able to get that fire under control pretty quickly. When [emergency management] were giving briefings one of the things they said attributed to their success was that there had been prescribed burning in that area.” Dickinson recalled. “Just saying we don’t want any fire anywhere anyhow, that’s not an option that we have.”