I covered the L.A. fires in the Palisades. So I had my blood tested for lead

I watched my humor snake done the conduit stuck into my limb arsenic I sat nether a canopy erected by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health astatine an Altadena church.

Four months anterior — astir to the hr — I stepped retired of my car successful Pacific Palisades to wailing sirens, raining ash and fleeing people.

Now, similar hundreds of others, I desperately wanted to know: Had pb erstwhile locked distant successful the homes of the Palisades and Altadena seeped into my bloodstream? And, if so, however overmuch present sat successful the vial successful the hands of Jessica Segura, a caregiver with the Department of Public Health?

L.A. Times newsman gets tested for pb aft covering Palisades & Eaton fires

Tania Rysinski took my seat aft me. She had evacuated from Pasadena and, aft a trying remediation process, had moved backmost location with her hubby and 3-year-old daughter. I asked what brought her to the Eaton occurrence assets fair.

“I besides worry,” she told me. “My girl is the 1 that we interest astir the most.”

Public wellness caregiver Jessica Segura takes humor from Tania Rysinski to beryllium tested for pb aft the Easton fire.

Despite hours of speechmaking astir and discussing remediation and wellness hazards with friends and family, Rysinski recovered small certainty that her household was safe. I shared her apprehension.

Alongside different wellness and situation reporters astatine The Times, I’ve work heavy technological studies, reviewed reams of information and interviewed dozens of experts to recognize what unsafe compounds, transported by upwind and smoke, had laced our h2o systems, settled into homes and embedded themselves successful the ungraded and our bodies.

Even so, our reporting near maine feeling mostly frustrated with my brain. Several times, aft I interviewed residents successful the pain areas, they would say: You’ve covered this successful detail. Would you consciousness comfy moving backmost present with kids?

I didn’t know.

A 20-foot-tall occurrence staring astatine you done the windshield is simply a precise tangible risk. The pb lurking successful the aerial and ungraded is simply a antithetic story. It is invisible and damages our bodies successful analyzable ways. And that harm happens quietly.

Segura, the nurse, removed the conduit from my limb and pressed a fabric shot to the needle prick. The results would not beryllium a elemental affirmative oregon negative, she explained. Instead, it would database the attraction successful micrograms of pb per deciliter of blood. Anything implicit 3.5 mcg/dL requires follow-up care, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I could expect results wrong 2 weeks, Segura said. I asked Rysinski what her program was if her levels were high.

“I person nary idea,” she said.

Neither did I.

Nurse Jessica Segura places a bandage connected newsman Noah Haggerty aft getting his humor to trial for lead.

Survival mode

I, admittedly, took small precaution to support myself from the wildfire fume during the 3 days I spent successful Pacific Palisades.

My encephalon focused connected much contiguous concerns: dodging downed electrical wires, plotting flight routes, jump=starting folks’ cars and watching successful fearfulness arsenic buildings erupted into flames successful beforehand of me.

Rysinski had felt the aforesaid successful Pasadena. “We were each connected endurance mode,” she said.

After retreating to my car, which reeked of smoke, for a little interruption the greeting aft the fires erupted, I got a connection from my editor. Like acrophobic friends and household who had been messaging maine from the East Coast — and strangers who’d seen my reports connected Instagram — the exertion wanted to cognize what the fume mightiness beryllium doing to our lungs. And were radical worried?

I threw my assemblage value against the car door, hardly managing to out-muscle the wind, and stumbled done gale-force gusts to speech to folks. At a haphazardly parked SUV, Amber Vanderbilt rolled down the window.

“I cognize this isn’t connected the apical of astir people’s minds,” I said, “but I’m funny however you oregon the radical you cognize person been dealing with the aerial quality. Has that been a interest for you?”

“No,” she said with a chuckle. “I spot that it’s connected the quality too, which is truly funny.” In fact, the sermon had frustrated her capable that she recalled yelling astatine the TV newscast, “No 1 cares! Show maine wherever the occurrence perimeter is! Tell maine wherever the upwind is going!”

I chuckled with her. I excessively did not care.

Then, I started looking astatine the data.

Piles of data

On Jan. 8, an aerial prime sensor successful Chinatown had work good particulate substance astatine a attraction implicit 13 times the national regular bounds — the fig that had prompted my squad to elicit my interrogation with Vanderbilt.

Amid the scattered, advertisement hoc investigating efforts that followed, 1 emerged arsenic a leader: the LA Fire HEALTH Study, oregon the Los Angeles Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health Study. Scientists from 8 probe institutions had banded unneurotic with immoderate backstage backing to, ambitiously, survey the wellness effects of the fires implicit the people of a decade.

Pacific Palisades residents be a municipality hallway connected the LA Fire HEALTH Study featuring starring scientists connected postfire wellness successful the backyard of a backstage residence connected May 13, 2025 successful Los Angeles.

(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

In May, I attended 1 of their events — supposedly a symposium, decidedly a cocktail enactment and possibly a fundraiser — astatine a location successful Brentwood.

A Times lensman and I, somewhat underdressed, scuttled past the valet and into the backyard. Guests began migrating to the achromatic tract chairs acceptable up connected the tennis tribunal to perceive the scientists speak.

The jaunty ambiance turned tense arsenic Palisadians struggled to marque consciousness of the biology situation unfolding successful beforehand of them.

“My girl is simply a surfer, Pali High student. She’s lone 17 years old,” 1 attendee said erstwhile the taxable of beaches came up. “Our household is having a really, truly hard clip telling what the existent information is.”

Dr. David Eisenman, a UCLA nationalist wellness prof and an avid surfer, had deed the waves that greeting aft cautiously reviewing the nonprofit Heal the Bay’s latest trial results that showed nary important levels of contaminants successful the water.

But the attendee pushed back.

“I cognize a ma who spent $6,000 of her ain wealth to person the formation tested and she recovered ridiculously precocious levels of arsenic,” she said. “This is wherever children are playing. This is insane. So, we don’t cognize who to trust. We don’t cognize what to do.”

The researchers sympathized with her frustration.

Leaders of the LA Fire Health Study, Harvard Professor Joseph Allen, left, UCLA Professor David Eisenman, middle, and Harvard Professor of Medicine Kari Nadeau pb a municipality hallway for Pacific Palisades residents connected the LA Fire Health Study connected post-fire wellness successful the backyard of a backstage residence connected May 13, 2025 successful Los Angeles, California. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

Pacific Palisades residents be a municipality hallway connected the LA Fire Health Study featuring starring scientists connected post-fire wellness successful the backyard of a backstage residence connected May 13, 2025 successful Los Angeles, California. The survey is simply a 10-year effort to survey the exposures to unsafe substances and consequent wellness effects. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)

For astir each operation of contaminant and domain, scientists person rigorously studied the vulnerability hazard and wellness impact, and, based connected that, the national and authorities governments person acceptable screening levels: Any much of a peculiar contaminant requires further action.

California’s level for pb successful residential ungraded is 80 milligrams per kilogram. That’s the magnitude that, successful the worst case, tin rise the humor pb level of a kid who routinely plays successful the ungraded by 1 mcg/dL. A humor pb level summation successful children of 5 mcg/dL corresponds to a nonaccomplishment of astir 1 to 3 IQ points.

But the occupation rapidly gets much analyzable than that.

Take the state’s screening level for arsenic, for example, based connected a 1-in-a-million accidental of processing crab implicit a beingness of exposure. The level is 0.032 milligram per kilogram of soil. But arsenic people occurs successful soil, typically 2 to 11 milligrams per kilogram.

When I asked the authorities Department of Toxic Substances Control astir this, it had a shockingly morbid answer. Arsenic occurring people astatine perchance cancer-causing levels, it said, is simply “a portion of surviving connected Earth.”

It’s not hard to spot wherefore speech of contaminants leaves radical frustrated and confused. That includes me, whose full-time occupation is to fig this worldly out.

Yet 1 study from the LA Fire HEALTH Study struck maine arsenic amazingly lucid. I couldn’t get it retired of my head.

Dr. Kari Nadeau, a researcher with the survey and prof astatine the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been collecting firefighters’ humor for years. After the L.A. County wildfires, she did the same.

The results: The firefighters who battled L.A. County’s municipality fires had pb levels successful their humor 5 times of those who had battled wood fires successful Yosemite.

Technically, nary level of pb successful the humor is safe, but we each unrecorded with it successful our blood. The mean American’s humor pb level sits astir 0.8 mcg/dL.

Elevated levels successful kids — supra 3.5 mcg/dL, according to the CDC — tin origin important encephalon and nervus harm starring to slowed improvement and behavioral issues. Adults are little delicate to lead, but nether overmuch higher concentrations — beyond 40 mcg/dL — the metal, which the assemblage mistakes for calcium, tin harm galore organs.

When I work my colleague’s sum of Nadeau’s findings successful March, a thought flickered from the backmost of my mind: What was successful my blood?

In our blood

As I waited for my humor trial results via snail mail, I became progressively funny not lone successful what the biology wellness risks of the fires are, but besides however our brains process them.

Spending truthful overmuch clip successful the information had changed me. One play I sat adjacent to a campfire, and arsenic I admired the dancing flames, I besides imagined the benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons the occurrence was stripping from the wood and whispering into the aerial for maine to inhale. In my head, I recited the national and authorities screening levels for airborne chemicals, similar a precocious schoolhouse pupil studying for a chemistry exam.

So, I called prof Wändi Bruine de Bruin, manager of the Schaeffer Institute’s Behavioral Science and Policy Initiative astatine USC and an adept connected the science of hazard assessment.

“Any concern with biology hazard tin beryllium hard to comprehend … but with the fires, it is overmuch much complex,” she said. Stacking aggregate risks with constricted accusation portion apt dealing with a mislaid location and uncertain aboriginal — “it’s a lot.”

To flight the helpless quest to find solace and certainty successful the numbers, Bruine de Bruin recommended focusing connected the astir applicable information to you from trusted experts oregon your ain testing, past shifting your absorption to simple, accessible actions to bounds aboriginal exposure.

Dr. Michael Crane, a starring wellness adept successful the effect to 9/11 and the pursuing biology disaster, agreed with Bruine de Bruin.

“It’s funny, if you marque a determination astir it, you usually get immoderate bid connected that point,” Crane said. “I would impulse radical to negociate the controllable risks — the ones that are close there, successful their fingers.”

As the archetypal daze of the violent attacks morphed into trauma, the precise existent semipermanent crab hazard posed by the fume and debris began to descend successful among New York’s aesculapian community. Crane recalled erstwhile an adept from the National Cancer Institute came down to speech with doctors.

“Fantastic young guy, and I mean, we fundamentally surrounded him,” helium said.

The doctors unloaded each their burning crab questions until 1 yet yelled, “Well, what bash you deliberation we should do?”

“Get them to halt smoking,” the adept bluntly replied.

Suffice to say, it did not soothe the doctors’ concerns.

“He was fortunate to get retired of that country live astatine that point,” Crane said.

Yet that 1 sentence, Crane believes, is simply a ample portion of wherefore the crab rates ne'er reached the sky-high levels galore of those doctors feared.

Samuel Girma tries to outrun the vigor of a smoldering location arsenic helium tries to forestall its dispersed adjacent doorway arsenic the Eaton occurrence grows successful Altadena connected Jan. 8, 2025.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

Since we don’t person silver-bullet aesculapian techniques to reverse the effects of vulnerability to each harmful contaminants, it’s prudent we effort to forestall different vulnerability and pb steadfast lives. For doctors, it means staying vigilant: alert of their patients’ risks and acceptable to enactment should those risks go a reality.

Crane chuckled arsenic helium recalled the seeming absurdity of the expert’s crab comment; past helium turned sincere. “We’re precise grateful for that guy,” helium said.

The results

Ten days aft my humor test, a missive from the Department of Public Health arrived. I rapidly opened it.

The pb level successful my blood: little than 1 mcg/dL.

Rysinski texted maine a fewer days aboriginal to stock that her results were the same.

In fact, of the 1,350 individuals acrophobic astir their exposures from the wildfires who had partaken successful the county’s pb humor investigating programme arsenic of May 31, lone 7 had levels greater than 3.5 mcg/dL. All were adults older than 40; each pb levels were nether 10 mcg/dL.

Dr. Nichole Quick, main aesculapian advisor for the Department of Public Health, wants radical to stay cautious astir contamination but is pleased by the archetypal results of the county’s pb investigating program.

“The results are reassuring,” Quick told me, looking astatine numbers from the opening of May.

Reassuring not that contamination isn’t contiguous — it is — but that galore of america are taking the simple, manageable steps to little our risk.

To look the often scary and seemingly insurmountable situation of making it done our scarred landscape, we indispensable bash the small things. Wash our hands, cleanable the floors and support the cigarettes distant from our lips.