Health and Economic Impact of Wildfires: Literature Review

This review study synthesizes available literature in epidemiology, economics and wildfirerelated studies to provide essential information for the valuation of health costs associated with wildfire events. We review three areas within these literatures: key health outcomes to be evaluated, association between wildfire smoke and health outcomes, and valuation of health effects. We find that the key health outcomes are mortality, restricted activity days (including work days lost), hospital admissions, respiratory symptoms, and self-treatment. Our review shows somewhat inconsistent results between the conventional and wildfire-related PM epidemiology studies. We summarize the recent estimates of per unit cost of mortality and morbidity and present recommendations for evaluators.