Less than a year after massive wildfires tore through Southern California, a new study suggests residents are experiencing significant health fallout. It reports sharp increases in emergency room visits for heart, lung and systemic illnesses.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles County found emergency visits rose markedly in neighborhoods affected by January’s Palisades and Eaton fires. The findings were reported by The Wall Street Journal and published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
Toxic exposure after historic fires
The Palisades and Eaton fires burned more than 35,000 acres, destroyed thousands of homes and devastated entire neighborhoods. Experts said fires of that scale release a complex mix of metals, chemicals and fine particles into the air as homes, vehicles and infrastructure burn.
“You have a much greater magnitude and a much greater complexity of toxins being produced by the disaster, affecting a very large, large population of people,” said Dr. Susan Cheng, vice chair for research at the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai.
What the data shows
Researchers analyzed emergency room visits from residents in fire-effected and adjacent zip codes between Jan. 7 — when the Palisades Fire began — and April 7. They compared those figures to the same time frame across multiple prior years, from 2018 to 2024…