When Nicholas Spada, one of the only scientists in the world who uses a nuclear method to detect toxic nanoparticles in wildfire smoke, took samples following the devastating Los Angeles fires earlier this year, he was alarmed by what he found.
As Inside Climate News reported, Spada is a project scientist at the UC Davis Air Quality Research Center and on a mission to ensure the public is aware that potentially harmful substances may be lurking in the air they breathe. He grew up near a vermiculite processing plant in Lompoc, California, and remembers his neighborhood caked in white dust, with people constantly coughing. Since then, he's been determined to fight for cleaner air and help people understand how to protect themselves from pollution.
After the LA wildfires in January, Spada's workload really picked up when fellow air researchers across the U.S. came to California to study which chemicals were in the urban fires, where most of the fuel was human-made, as ICN explained. Since synthetic materials contain a complex and toxic cocktail of chemicals, such as dioxins, lead, and heavy metals, they pose a significant health risk to people when inhaled, even in short bursts.
Using a nuclear X-ray process, Spada looks at nanoparticles, which are "0.01 the size of a human hair," according to ICN. Because these particles are so small, they can more easily penetrate deep within human tissues and vital organs, increasing the risk of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Spada has been focusing his efforts on studying lead paint, weatherproofed clothing coated in "forever chemicals," and lithium batteries, as the nanoparticles that form from these substances are especially dangerous in the extreme heat of wildfires.
Melissa Bumstead, an activist for families near the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, where rocket engine testing and nuclear research took place after World War II, accompanied Spada several days after the LA fires, helping him install monitoring stations south of the Palisades and Eaton fires.
"It looked like snow," Bumstead said, per ICN. "The ash was on my daughter's swing set — that's when I knew we had to do something."
As ICN explained, Spada is one of just two researchers qualified to use "time-sorted cascading impactor air monitoring," which takes samples of the air using eight filters that can capture particles from 10 micrometers to as small as 0.09 of a micron. He set it to rotate at intervals of two hours to get more accurate results, and after a six-month waiting period, he was able to see just how high the levels of certain chemicals in the air were following the fires.
Elevated levels of lead, cadmium, antimony, and asbestos — all known carcinogens — along with sulfur, chlorine, titanium, and copper, all showed up in the samples taken from the West Hills, Pasadena, and Eaton sites. Some of the particles were smaller than 0.1 microns, making them highly hazardous.
"The smaller the particles, the deeper they go into the lungs and the harder they are to remove," Mohammed Baalousha, an environmental nanoparticle researcher at the University of South Carolina and co-researcher of Spada's, told ICN. "That's why this kind of analysis matters. We're talking about invisible pollutants with long-term health consequences."
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Yes — often 😬 Spada aims to release an initial report on the air samples taken during the LA fires. The next step in his research will be to analyze the samples using an advanced technique called synchrotron-induced X-ray fluorescence. SXRF helps scientists determine the types and quantities of elements in each sample, which Spada said is particularly helpful for identifying heavy metals.
In the future, he hopes that air monitoring will become a higher priority, especially as wildfires and other natural disasters increase in frequency due to rising global temperatures. Spada believes that every school should make air quality reports available, that every disaster should have monitoring guidelines in place, and that students should be able to view real-time air pollution levels using an app.
"I'm not just doing this for the science. I'm doing this for James and Ronan," Spada said, referring to his children. "If they grow up in a world where clean air is an expectation, not a luxury, then maybe I did something right."
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