Wildfire smoke can be dangerous to human health, and climate change is increasing risks of exposure. In this panel discussion hosted by the Yale Center for Environmental Communication and Yale Climate Connections, we’ll cover how climate and weather affect wildfires and air pollution, how that affects human health and what people might do to stay safe when smoke is in the air.
MODERATOR: Dr. Kai Chen, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology (Environmental Health); Director of Research, Climate Change and Health; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Engineering in 2016 from Nanjing University in China. During 2014-2015, he served as a Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Prior to joining the Yale School of Public Health faculty in July 2019, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Postdoc Fellow at Helmholtz Zentrum München-German Center for Environmental Health. Dr. Chen’s research focuses on the intersection of climate change, air pollution, and human health. His work involves applying multidisciplinary approaches in climate and air pollution sciences, exposure assessment, and environmental epidemiology to investigate how climate change may impact human health. Much of this work has been done in China, Europe, and the U.S.
PANELISTS:
Marquel Musgrave, tribal citizen of Nanbé Owingeh (the Pueblo of Nambe), will speak about the impacts of wildfires on their community. Marquel currently works for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. Prior to her role at NIWRC Marquel was the Membership and Communications Director for the Coalition to Stop Violence Against Native Women. Marquel’s recent advocacy and organizing work has focused on clean indoor air mitigation and disability justice to support the collective and long term health of tribal communities during the Covid-19 pandemic and ongoing climate crisis. They initiated a series of mutual aid efforts during New Mexico’s recent record breaking wildfires. Marquel has a background in outdoor experiential education and served an elected term as Tribal Council Secretary for the Pueblo of Nambe. Cultural and language revitalization including traditional ecological knowledge are deeply important to them. The values that guide Marquel’s advocacy are ‘seegi’ and ‘agín’ or love and respect for her people, all relatives, human and non-human.
Dr. Jeff Masters, meteorologist and regular contributor at Yale Climate Connections, will speak about weather and air quality. Jeff worked as a hurricane scientist with the NOAA Hurricane Hunters from 1986-1990. After a near-fatal flight into category 5 Hurricane Hugo, he left the Hurricane Hunters to pursue a safer passion – earning a 1997 Ph.D. in air pollution meteorology from the University of Michigan. In 1995, he co-founded the Weather Underground, and served as its chief meteorologist and on its Board of Directors until it was sold to the Weather Company in 2012. Between 2005-2019, his Category 6 blog was one of the Internet’s most popular and widely quoted sources of extreme weather and climate change information.
Colleen E Reid, PhD MPH, a professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder, will speak about health and wildfires. Reid studies how environmental and social exposures interact to influence health with a particular focus on exposures caused by global climatic changes and society’s responses to those changes. To date her research has focused on the health impacts of exposure to air pollution from wildfires, extreme heat events, and proximity to urban vegetation. She has received funding for research from the EPA, NSF, CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the JPB Foundation. Prior to becoming an assistant professor in Geography at the University of Colorado, Boulder, she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Reid completed a Ph.D. in Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley in 2014, a Masters of Public Health in 2007 from the University of California Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science from Brown University in 2000.