- Title
- High community burden of smoke-related symptoms in the Hunter and New England regions during the 2019-2020 Australian bushfires.
- Creator
- Howard, Zachary L.; Carlson, Sandra J.; Baldwin, Zoe; Johnston, Fay; Durrheim, David N.; Dalton, Craig B.
- Relation
- Public Health Research & Practice Vol. 30, Issue December 2020, no. e30122007
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.17061/PHRP30122007
- Publisher
- Sax Institute
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2020
- Description
- From October 2019 to February 2020, Australia was ravaged by bushfires. For large parts of the country, visible smoke and prolonged periods of elevated particulate air pollution (see Appendix 1, available from: osf. io/8z3ne/) became the norm, and resulted in community concern about the health impacts of bushfire smoke. Particulate matter from smoke is known to increase both mortality1 and hospitalisation risk.1,2 In New South Wales (NSW), Australia, there were increases in emergency presentations of respiratory illnesses during the smoke-affected period.3 However, these presentations comprise only the most serious cases of bushfire-related illness. Comparatively little is known about the lower levels of the burden-of-illness pyramid (a way of categorising illness from mild through to severe) – that is, what proportion of the community was affected by smoke but did not present to health services? Typical health surveillance systems are likely to miss these cases; as a result, if the majority of smoke-related illness is mild, the true health impact of the bushfires is likely to be severely underestimated.
- Subject
- air pollutants; bushfires; smoke affected; health
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1441856
- Identifier
- uon:41549
- Identifier
- ISSN:2204-2091
- Language
- eng
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