DENVER — With multiple fires burning across Colorado’s Front Range, it’s not enough to stay inside. Even if your windows and doors are closed, smoke can still get in. But there are simple ways to clean the air and surfaces in your home, according to Delphine Farmer, a chemistry professor at Colorado State University.
“The science is really solid,” Farmer said. “Wildfire smoke is really damaging to human health… Being inside helps, but it doesn't solve the problem,” especially for vulnerable populations like children, the elderly or those with respiratory conditions.
Even if you’re healthy, Farmer said her research shows it’s important to take precautions.
Smoke is made up of both particles you can see and gasses you can smell.
To protect yourself inside your home, Farmer recommends using an air filter to avoid breathing in the particles. Air conditioning systems and portable air purifiers have filters built in. You can also make a cheap DIY filter using materials from the hardware store, Farmer said. If you don’t have air filters in your home, she suggests going to a community space with air conditioning.
When it comes to the gasses in smoke, Farmer said “they just get stuck to all the surfaces inside. Your walls, the floor, the ceiling.”
Those contaminants “will stick in and then, over time, will slowly start to come off,” Farmer said. You might have a lingering campfire smell in your house – or no smell at all.
“One good way to protect yourself from those smoke gasses is to actually clean your floors,” Farmer said. The simple combination of dusting or vacuuming, along with mopping floors, helps remove all of those stuck on contaminants, she said.
“Unfortunately, you can't mop your walls or your ceiling very well,” she said. So there's always going to be a little bit left over. But she said these simple filtering and cleaning methods can help a lot if your home is being exposed to wildfire smoke.
Wildfire
Photos capturing views of the three fast-moving Colorado wildfires
If you’re also worried about the spaces outside of your home, like your garden, Farmer said new research suggests plants have ways of responding to smoke themselves.
“When there's a wildfire event, we tell people to go inside and close your windows and doors,” she said. “It turns out, plants do exactly the same thing.”
While studying forests in the Rocky Mountains a couple of years ago, Farmer said a huge plume of wildfire smoke passed over the area.
“What we saw is that the plants just changed their response,” she said. Just like we close our windows and doors, all of the pores on the plant’s leaves closed up.
Usually those pores, known as stomata, take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. But when exposed to smoke, they close tight. The plants temporarily stop photosynthesizing and growing. Once the air is clear, those pores reopen and the plant spews out the leftover smoke inside.
Similar to how our homes get coated in particles and gasses, so do the plant pores.
“If a wildfire smoke event is very short lived and only goes on for a short period of time, that might not be that damaging,” Farmer said. “But if we have these extended wildfire smoke events and heavy smoke down on the ground, then those plants are going to stop growing.”
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