Honolulu: A University of Hawaii A study examining the health effects of last year’s deadly wildfires on Maui found that 74 percent of participants may have difficulty breathing and otherwise have poor respiratory health, and nearly half had compromised symptoms. appeared lung function,

Data collected from 679 people in January and February, researchers hope this will be a long-term study forest fire survivors Lasting for at least a decade. Researchers released preliminary results of that research on Wednesday. They hope to eventually enroll 2,000 people in their study to produce a snapshot of the estimated 10,000 people affected by the fires.

Another of the researchers, John A. Dr. Alika Mounakiya, a professor at the Burns School of Medicine, said people who reported exposure to wildfires were more likely to have symptoms.

Many study participants had not seen a doctor, he said. Some study participants said they were not able to do so because clinics had burned down or because they prioritized obtaining housing, jobs, and food after the disaster. Maunakea urged people exposed to the wildfire to get tested.

“Some problems may arise in the future,” he said. “Please see your doctor. Pay more attention to your health just because of this.”

Two-thirds of the study participants lived in Lahaina at the time of the fire. Nearly half of the participants reported daily or weekly exposure to smoke, ash or debris.

At least 101 people died in the fire on August 8, making it the deadliest wildfire in the US in more than a century. It burned thousands of buildings, displaced 12,000 residents, and destroyed Maui’s historic downtown.

Report shows Maui doesn’t have enough pulmonary health specialist To provide care to those who need it, this expertise will be needed, said Ruben Juarez, a health economics professor at the university and one of the study’s leaders. Researchers are talking with Hawaii’s congressional delegation to figure out how to bring these resources to Maui, he said.

Maunakea said researchers want to avoid the high cancer and mortality rates experienced 20 years later by people affected by the September 11, 2001 attacks.

“Hopefully we will be able to prevent this tragedy from escalating to high mortality rates in the future, as we saw with other events like 9/11,” Mounakiya said.

Dr. Gopal Allada, an associate professor of medicine specializing in pulmonary and critical care at Oregon Science & Health University, who was not involved in the research, said it would have been great if the study participants had similar lung function before the fires. Tests would have been done. , But he acknowledged that this was not possible, as is often the case in similar studies.

They hope the researchers will receive funding to continue their research over time.

Allada said most scientific studies on the health effects of wildfire focus on what happens to people in the days and weeks after exposure and less is known about long term effects,

He praised the researchers for showing a problem and collecting data that could influence policy makers.

“This is important work that will hopefully influence policy makers and people who control budgets and where apprentices go to train and things like that,” he said.