Heart attacks, lung conditions jumped after Los Angeles wildfires

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Los Angeles wildfires of nearly a year ago took an unexpectedly heavy toll on residents’ health, a new study found. An unusually large number of people suffered from heart attacks, lung conditions and a perplexing rise in unexplained illnesses, according to an analysis by researchers of emergency-department data at Cedars-Sinai, the largest hospital in Los Angeles County.

Their findings offer clues into the potential cost to human health of massive wildfires that spread quickly from wild lands into urban areas, said Dr. Susan Cheng, vice chair for research affairs at Cedars-Sinai’s Smidt Heart Institute and senior author of the study. Such wildfires are increasing in frequency and scope, and release heavy metals and other toxins into the air as they engulf homes and cars.

“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," she said. For the study, researchers examined data from visits to the emergency department at Cedars-Sinai from Jan. 7, when the massive Palisades Fire erupted, through April 7, comparing them with visits in the same period over the previous seven years.

They focused on visits by residents of neighborhoods either directly affected by or adjacent to the wildfires. The research was published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Emergency-department visits by residents of fire-affected and adjacent areas more than doubled to 398 for mysterious symptoms such as chest pain, abdominal pain and dizziness that doctors couldn’t always link to a diagnosis like a heart attack or dehydration.