The Missoula City-County Health Department smoke monitoring station, located on the southeast corner of the Seeley Lake Elementary School property in downtown Seeley Lake, record particulate levels daily. The shaded part of the chart notes the Hazardous Health Effects Category, defined as visibility less than 1.3 mile and particulate levels above 250 μg/m3. The Rice Ridge Fire started July 24. The fire grew from 60 acres to more than 3,000 acres between July 31 and Aug. 1, noted by the first spike in particulate levels. Particulate levels continued to climb increasing in amount and duration. The Health Department recommended Aug. 9 that Seeley Lake residents leave and others avoid the area to reduce their exposure. During the 64 day period represented, there were 18 days were the average was in Hazardous and 36 days where particulate levels were Hazardous for at least one hour. All data is available at http://svc.mt.gov/deq/todaysair/
SEELEY LAKE – The Seeley Lake community response to the wildfire health screening held Sept. 20 was overwhelming. Health officials closed the door three hours early after 95 participants signed up. That was the maximum number of materials that they had brought with them, not knowing the level of interest.
About three weeks ago, the Missoula City-County Health Department approached the University of Montana researchers about conducting the study because the levels of particulates and duration were unprecedented.
"Ever since the end of July you have been averaging over 200 μg/m3 per day," said Chris Migliacclio, PhD, research immunologist and clinical pharmacist in charge in ImProving Health Among Rural Montanans (IPHARM) program in the UM School of Pharmacy. "At the very least we can get up there and collect some data."
Migliacclio along with other scientists interested in studying the long-term effects of wildfire smoke got together and they were able to utilize the IPHARM infrastructure. IPHARM is interdisciplinary so researchers were able to not only assess the participants physical health but also their emotional and mental health.
"This is a huge area of interest without a lot of data on it," said Migliacclio. "We know that high [particulate] levels [high risk groups] don't go outside, don't exert themselves. What we don't know is with sustained exposure, are there long-term effects?"
Migliacclio said IPHARM was given Institutional Review Board approval to do the research. The board is required to approve the surveys, tests and compensation, in this case a free lunch ticket, to ensure the research is appropriate and people are not coersed into participating. The review process was expedited and they were approved in a week.
Sixteen pharmacy, nursing and social work students and scientists from UM including clinical pharmacists, staff scientists and epidemiologist put on the screening using the IPHARM model.
Those who participated in the screening responded to several surveys that assessed their physical and mental health. The intent was twofold. First to assess the initial physical effects on heart and lung condition due to the wildfire smoke and mental health caused by the fire. Second, researchers hope to determine residents' awareness of and response to the public health announcements that were disseminated during the wildfire event.
One of the surveys asked if the participant left after the Missoula City-County Health Department recommended Aug. 9 that Seeley Lake residents leave the area until the smoke passes. Two other surveys assessed participants' mental health and how they felt on the day of the assessment.
"Without a doubt moods have brightened because it is raining, it's cooler, smoke is leaving and those are affected," said Migliacclio recognizing that they would have seen more negative responses in the middle of the smoke event and evacuations.
Participants also went through a number of screenings: height and weight; blood pressure; blood oxygen level; forced expiration volume; peak expiratory flow rate and spirometry. The last three tests assess the amount of air that can be forcibly blown out of the lungs in one minute; how fast someone can blow air from their lungs and the amount of air in the participants' lungs.
Those that participated are now the cohort for Seeley Lake. If medical professionals start seeing an increase in certain medical conditions, they can look back at the cohort and see if they are any different in them than say another group of people or just people in the control population.
Migliacclio said they would retrospectively find a control community to compare with the results from Seeley Lake. They will try to find a similar mountain community in Montana that didn't experience the wildfire smoke this summer like Seeley Lake did.
"We will hopefully be able to see if there has been any lingering effects," said Migliacclio. "Hopefully DEQ will have some information as far as getting the message out for [recommending] evacuations and adverse health events."
Migliacclio hopes that this study generates information, guidelines and tools for health professionals and environmental quality people so when this happens again they know what can be done either during or right after to help mitigate the effects.
"We had no idea how many people would participate," said Migliacclio. "Usually we have an idea how many patients we would have at a health screening. We get more power [in the data] by revisiting. Everyone becomes their own control and we can compare that to the whole population in some other area."
Many of the UM researchers are funded through the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences. Migliacclio said they hope to get additional funding to do the data analysis and follow-up assessments for the project.
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