The smoke from prescribed burn and managed wildfires is an extremely toxic air pollutant that is very dangerous to unborn fetuses, infant children and elderly people. It also affects normal healthy people without warning. Wood smoke pollution is 12 times more carcinogenic than cigarette smoke, attacks the body cells up to 40 times longer, and kills at least 40,000 adults and children every year. It contains a toxic soup of more than 4,000 chemical compounds of harmful gases and particle matter that go deep in the lungs and kill people, 69 of which are known human carcinogens, including arsenic, particulate matter, ozone, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, dioxin, nitrogen oxides, and radioactive material. Warnings to stay inside on high pollution days are misleading and false. The tiny particles and gases seep inside of homes reaching up to 70 percent of the outside pollution level. No one is safe inside or outside of their homes.
