University of Oregon study reveals shortcomings in public health messaging around wildfire smoke exposure

Public health agencies are playing an increasingly important role in alerting residents to the risks of wildfire smoke as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of wildfires in the West. But that messaging can lack important information about the severity of that risk and specific actions that can be taken to mitigate it, according to a new study from the University of Oregon.

The study examined nearly 1,300 messages about wildfire smoke exposure that were sent in 2022 by federal, state and county health agencies in Oregon and Washington using the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. While slightly more than half the tweets were sent during September and October when wildfire smoke peaked, less than a fifth of them contained useful air quality descriptions or steps residents could take to mitigate exposure to it, such as using an air purifier at home or wearing a mask outdoors to filter out ash and smoke particles.

Joining us to discuss the findings, and the opportunities they reveal to better communicate wildfire smoke health risks is Cathy Slavik, the lead author of the study and a research associate at the Center for Science Communication Research at the University of Oregon.

This transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more intense, which can lead to dangerously poor air quality. But a new study by researchers at the University of Oregon found that public health agencies could do a much better job communicating the health risks around exposure to wildfire smoke. In particular, they found that messages often lacked important information about the severity of air quality and specific actions that people can take in response. Cathy Slavik is the lead author of the study. She is a research associate at the Center for Science Communication Research at the University of Oregon and she joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Cathy Slavik: It’s great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Miller: What was your motivation for doing this study?

Slavik: It’s a good question. I guess I had two motivations, or two reasons. One was personal and one was maybe more practical. I’ll start with the personal reason. I was new to Oregon when I came here in the summer of 2022 to start this job at the Center for Science Communication Research. And as someone who struggles quite a bit with asthma, when I arrived here it was the middle of the summer and I quickly made note of the wildfire smoke that was present in the air.

Miller: Can I ask you, had you come from a place where you had already experienced bad air quality due to wildfire smoke?

Slavik:  No, I was just going to say I was originally from Toronto, so it’s the east coast of Canada, and this was a really, really new risk to me. I had some experience with traffic-related air pollution, but wildfire smoke was really a new one for me. My background is in public health and environmental exposures, and I found myself looking for information from government agencies to help inform myself of how risky the air was, whether I should be taking certain precautions, especially given the fact that I knew I had these issues around asthma and respiratory issues.

Miller: I’ve got to say, one thing that comes to mind immediately is that, I think it was just last summer, when folks in New York City and DC and Boston – a little bit further [east] than Toronto – who, like you, had never dealt with wildfire smoke, all of a sudden they had, as well, from fires in Quebec. But, back to the west, so that was your initial motivation, both a broad academic question and also a personal one. Why focus on, what at the time in 2022, was called Twitter?

Slavik: Certainly before the big Elon Musk takeover that has become the headlines more recently, Twitter was used as a really, really important government communication tool. It still is, although usership among Twitter users, or now called X users, has declined a little bit, given the new direction of the platform in recent times. But we did focus on Twitter, because it was, and still is, being used predominantly by government agencies to try to communicate with the public.  It does still provide us, even today, with lessons for how to improve risk communications, no matter which platform they end up moving to next.

Miller: What did you learn in terms of the timing of the public health messaging about wildfire smoke that you read, thousands of messages in the summer of 2022? What struck you in terms of when the messages came out?

Slavik: A little over half of the tweets that we had studied – you mentioned it was over a thousand, I think it’s 13,000 tweets or so – were sent during September and October in 2022. And this coincided with the peak levels of wildfire smoke in the air. What this told us was that agencies were doing a great job of communicating about wildfire smoke when exposure was at its highest level.

But what we know is that people also need to be reminded ahead of time, to prepare for wildfire smoke seasons before the smoke rolls in. And so on the flip side, our results suggested to us that agencies could also start communicating about smoke a little bit earlier in the year, to help people prepare more.

Miller: And when you say earlier in the year, do you mean at the beginning of smoke season, or when meteorologists can look at wind patterns or weather patterns and say, it looks like it could get bad in terms of AQI [Air Quality Index] in the next 36 hours. I mean, what do you recommend in terms of when exactly those messages should go out?

Slavik: From a public health perspective, in order to help people prepare, perhaps doing things like going and purchasing air filters, replacing ones in their air purifiers, perhaps even among vulnerable folks who might need to stock up on medications ahead of something like a wildfire smoke season, we want to make sure that people have ample time to prepare.

So rather than, let’s say 36 hours, maybe that in fact looks like a month or two ahead of smoke season. So, taking advantage of relatively quiet times when we’re thinking about poor air quality, maybe that’s early spring, even in the winter, making sure that we’re reminding people to already start thinking about wildfire smoke, even if that’s a few months away.

Miller: How much does research suggest that folks pay attention to messages like that in the off-season? I’m thinking about, for example, I don’t know if this metaphor is a great one, but it strikes me as saying to somebody, “you should have snow chains in your car,” giving this message, say, in September. “Winter is coming and in three months there could be serious snow in mountain passes, so get your chains now.” Do people take action when the threat is months away?

Slavik: Yeah, it’s a really, really good question. There are ways of dropping cues to people so that they are reminded about the risks, but maybe not necessarily communicating that they have to take action right now, when the risk isn’t present. So the messaging might look a little bit differently when we’re talking about wildfire smoke communications during these off-peak periods of time versus really on-peak or high exposure times.

But there is evidence to suggest that even discussing the risks can help people be reminded of it and stay on top of it, stay engaged in the topic, even if it’s perhaps a few months away, before they really need to take action.

Miller: I started with the timing of these messages, but what stood out to you in terms of the content of these tweets?

Slavik: In addition to the timing of the tweets, we did also look at whether the accounts were using certain best practices, based on what we know around social media messaging, certainly health messaging. And something that we found was that less than one-fifth of the tweets described the level of risk posed by wildfire smoke, and this was predominantly using the Air Quality Index. And even fewer tweets actually contained specific advice on what steps residents could take to mitigate exposure to risk, so what kind of actions they could take to protect themselves from smoke.

Miller: The Air Quality Index – AQI – it’s a number that can be associated with colors on a map, that a lot of us have gotten, sadly, very used to paying attention to in recent years. And you’re saying in fewer than 20% of the tweets, this wasn’t mentioned. Why do you think that is?

Slavik: Unfortunately, we don’t necessarily know why that is with this study. We were predominantly interested in just quantifying and taking a look at the lay of the land, if you will, to see whether it was being discussed at all. And it was being discussed a little bit, but we were quite surprised to see that it didn’t come up in more of these communications that we were looking at.

Miller: And when you say the best practices, what do you think would be different on the part of the public’s likely reaction if, say, a county health department puts out a tweet saying, “hey, just so you know, folks, the AQI today, it could be close to 200,” versus saying, “hey, just so you know, folks, the air is going to be really bad today.” What’s the difference?

Slavik: It’s a great question. When we talk about the Air Quality Index, it’s more than just a number. It is a way for people to actually help contextualize what that number is, what the risk is to them. So we might tell people, you know, “today it’s 151.” But what does that actually mean? The AQI tells us that, in addition to this number, that the AQI category is attached to that number. It’s unhealthy because the number is 151 today.

That helps people understand what actions they might want to take on a particular day. If it’s an unhealthy category, that might mean that instead of going for that run today that they had originally planned, maybe they’ll hold off a couple of days until the air quality is better, because it might be a little bit risky to their health. So it helps people contextualize what that risk is and make better, more informed decisions around how to protect themselves.

Miller: What do you see as the potential repercussions of public health agencies not providing the best information, or the information in the most helpful way, when it comes to bad air quality? What’s at stake here?

Slavik: I think what’s at stake is really people’s health. This is why we think it’s so important to communicate about wildfire smoke risks. We want to make sure that people are informed about the risks. We want to make sure that people also understand that the risk is something that we can adapt to. There are ways that we can protect ourselves, there are strategies that we can use, and so hopefully that can also offer people a sense of solutions. It’s not just something that they need to constantly worry about or fear, but also something that they should feel like they’re, to some extent, in control over, and something that they can manage as best as they can.

Miller: That they have agency, as opposed to just being people being blown about, in this case, by bad air.

Slavik: Yeah.

Miller: What do you see, if anything, as the impact of this research, since you released it, from public health agencies. I mean, have you heard anything from communications managers at county or state or federal levels to say, ‘oh, yeah, we recognize that these are some of the patterns we fell into in 2022 and we’re going to do something different going forward.’

Slavik: Well, the study was just published last month, so we haven’t had as much of that back and forth with government agencies as I think we hope to have going forward. The next phase of this project will really be focusing on reaching out to more government agencies and officials to see how the results of this work and some of our other research could be useful.

We did receive some really positive feedback from staff at the EPA, who reviewed an earlier draft of this paper during the submission process to the journal. I am also presenting to officials in British Columbia, Canada, where I’m originally from, later this week, actually – about wildfire smoke communications. So I think there’s certainly interest there on behalf of governments and officials.

These are folks who really want to protect the public and see it as their mission to make sure that people are aware of the risks. But what that will look like going forward I think remains to be seen, based on this research as well as a lot of other emerging research around wildfire smoke risk communications and best practices.

Miller: A public agency like the Oregon Health Authority or a county health department, they don’t work in vacuums. There are also media amplifiers, like our public radio station you’re on right now. What do you want to see from the media?

Slavik: I think in terms of partnerships with the media and government agencies and also other kinds of trusted information sources, maybe that’s community faith leaders or other community leaders who are respected in neighborhoods. Those are folks that we as public health communicators really want to make sure are in tune with the messaging that is hopefully coming across around wildfire smoke risk. I think that that will be a really, really big priority for governments and for media and other stakeholders to engage together in and figure out ways to really communicate to the public across the board.

Miller: Cathy Slavik, thanks very much.

Slavik: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: Cathy Slavik is a research associate at the Center for Science Communication Research at the University of Oregon. She talked to us about the better ways that public health agencies can communicate the health risks from wildfire smoke.

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