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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH
Beyond the Smoke continued from page 21
PM and lead, while others are not as well understood, especially indoors. These results were discussed by diverse partner teams, including the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Los Angeles Department of Public Health to determine their potential impact on public health. The standardized testing supported wildfire recovery efforts and public guidance, while continued exploratory testing will inform future public health planning and environmental monitoring. Such exploratory testing adds to the collective knowledge of what exposures may be present as the science evolves on what such exposures may mean for health.
Optimizing Future Emergency Response
Timely response in the Los Angeles fires was only possible through prior strategic interagency collaboration. The Public Health Assessment Unit within the Incident Command Structure successfully integrated the various agencies into the response and ensured that sampling methodologies and action levels were appropriate to inform public health decisions. These complementary partnerships were fostered by effective capability recognition of the various entities. Local expertise and leadership was essential.
With wildfires transitioning from seasonal threats to year-round public health emergencies, the coordinated response by the California environmental and public health teams provides a vital blueprint for how laboratories can adapt to this new reality. Through standardized testing, timely data interpretation, continued development of testing methods and close interagency collaboration, laboratories helped protect communities from potential risks and strengthened the foundation for future emergency response. Public health laboratories nationwide should build upon these lessons to strengthen preparedness infrastructure and deepen cross-sector partnerships, ensuring that scientific expertise remains at the center of emergency response.
The findings and conclusions in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of the California Department of Public Health or the California Health and Human Services Agency. g
Oregon ' s SensOR™ Module By Matthew Shrensel, air quality monitoring manager, Laboratory and Environmental Assessment Division, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
Each year, Oregonians face increasing risks from wildfire smoke. To improve geographic data coverage and provide the public critical and timely information, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality( DEQ) developed the SensOR™ module, a low-cost monitoring solution. Many commercially available, compact low-cost sensor solutions have advantages, but don’ t necessarily serve Oregon DEQ’ s requirements for air monitoring. To solve these problems, DEQ developed the SensOR™ module for measuring PM 2. 5 based on DEQ ' s expertise with monitoring wildfire smoke and historical data. SensOR™ distinguishes itself from most commercial products by integrating with commercial data acquisition software, providing active airflow, controlling humidity to reduce measurement artifacts, and it is adjusted by DEQ for regional wood smoke measurement artifacts. These features enabled DEQ to double the size of its monitoring network and provide data to the public for decision making.
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