Wildfire Smoke Cuts $1 Trillion In American Wages
Bloomberg Intelligence has done the math. Wildfire smoke undermines health and worker productivity. This amounts to approximately $1 trillion, a substantial fraction of the US GDP. The study points out that the effects of wildfires are not just the ones that will occur generations from now. The damage to GDP is being done this year. Add that to the results of drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods. The total certainly rises.
“From 2020 through 2024, US workers in the retail, wholesale, transportation, construction, mining and agriculture industries alone lost $1.1 trillion in wages because of exposure to wildfire smoke”, the report says.
While this was primarily a problem in the western US, as wildfires have spread east and northern into Canada wildfires send smoke into New York City. People in New York go to hospital.
Hospital Visits
Health is as large an issue as preoperative restriction. Many firefighters do not wear gear that protects their lungs. And, this has gotten worse. Meanwhile, the amount of toxic wildfire smoke that Americans in the Lower 48 states have been exposed to has also doubled in the past five years from the levels in 2006-19, according to researchers at Stanford and the University of Washington.”
The problem that Bloomberg deceived is in the US. With massive wildfires in Europe. The problem is now worldwide.
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