The wildfire season of 2023 was the most destructive ever recorded in Canada and a new study suggests the impact was unprecedented.
The wildfire season of 2023 was the most destructive ever recorded in Canada and a new study suggests the impact was unprecedented. It found that four of the year’s wildfires in mine-impacted areas around Yellowknife, Northwest Territories potentially contributed up to half of the arsenic that wildfires emit globally each year.
The work, led by researchers at the University of Waterloo and Nipissing University, is the first to calculate the amount of arsenic that was stored in areas at high risk of wildfires around Yellowknife. Looking at data from the past five decades, the team estimates the 2023 wildfires potentially released between 69 and 183 tonnes of arsenic.
Arsenic, a potent toxin, which the World Health Organization associates with diabetes, cardiovascular disease, various cancers, and infant mortality, can be transformed by wildfire and released into the environment from the soils that normally sequester it.
Read more at: University of Waterloo
Photo Credit: sippakorn via Pixabay
