Mercury rising and Mega-Fires

One more note on the fires.   As Dave Wielenga points out below:  where there’s smoke, there’s particulate matter to be inhaled.  And according to a new study, there’s also likely to be rising mercury, in the air you breathe, as well as in thermometers.

Just in time for the current fires, a new study has been released showing that “fires in the lower 48 states and Alaska contribute almost as much mercury to the air as coal-fired power plants”.  According to researchers, this is mercury that has been absorbed by trees and other plants from natural and manmade sources.  Once the biomass burns, the mercury is released into the atmosphere.   And Southern California, as Dave Gardetta writes in an article in the current issue of Los Angeles examining last year’s Griffith Park fire, is “the nation’s maximum fire-prone landscape”.

Unfortunately, maximum may be in the process of becoming even more maximum than ever before, as a report on last Sunday’s 60 Minutes revealed.  Seven of America’s ten busiest wildfire seasons have occurred since 1999, according to records dating back to 1960.  The 60 Minutes report examined the link between “a new age of mega-fires — forest infernos ten times bigger than the fires we’re used to seeing” and global warming.  You can read the report or watch video of the story here.

Tags: 60 Minutes, Griffith Park, mega-fires, mercury, smoke, wildfires