The Environmental Chemistry of Fire: Methods, Instruments, and Analytical Results

The interface of wildfires with urban landscapes (WUI) is an important new environmental issue for air and water quality, based on a study by the National Academies of Science. For example, recently there have been a considerable number of wildfires in the western United States, notably in California, Colorado, Washington, and Oregon over the past 10 years that have resulted in the destruction of millions of acres of forest and in some cases thousands of homes have been destroyed. For example, the Campfire (2018) in California burned ~150,000 acres and destroyed 18,000 structures and 1100 vehicles. The study of the National Academies of Science points out many of the possible effects of WUI fires on both air and water quality. Furthermore, they report that a typical home with vehicles present are highly combustible with literally thousands of pounds of materials, including pine lumber, roofing, flooring, furniture, insulation, batteries, paint, and many other combustible materials. Volatile compounds known to originate in wildfires at the wildfire-urban interface include: carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, acrolein, hydrogen cyanide, ammonia, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen bromide, hydrogen fluoride, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated biphenyls, polychlorinated dibenzyl-p-dioxins, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and phosphate flame retardants . Less is known about the leaching of ash, carbon, and smoke to streams directly from WUI fires, but compounds such as per and polyfluorinated alkyl substances are expected. This recent environmental issue would be a good topic for Pittcon where we bring together experts from Government, Industry, and the University to apply various types of instrumentation including: GC/MS, LC/MS, both with state of the art accurate mass to identify the important contaminants in air and water that result over a wild area of thousands of square miles from wildfires.