Heart attacks surged after January blazes

In the first 90 days after the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted in January, the caseload at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room looked different from the norm.

- BY CORINNE PURTILL

CHRISTINA HOUSE Los Angeles Times SMOKE from nearby fires fills the sky Jan. 8 as seen from the Santa Monica Pier.

There were 46% more visits to the Los Angeles hospital for heart attacks than typically occurred during the same period over the previous seven years. Visits for respiratory illnesses increased 24%. And unusual blood test results rose 118%.

These findings were reported in a study published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. The study, part of a research project documenting the fires’ long-term health effects, joins several recent papers documenting the disasters’ physical toll.

Although other U.S. wildfires have consumed more acres or cost more lives, the Palisades and Eaton fires were uniquely dangerous to human health because they burned an unusual mix of materials: the trees, brush and organic material of a typical wildfire, along with a toxic stew of cars, batteries, plastics, electronics and other human-made materials.

There’s no precedent for a situation that exposed this many people to this kind of smoke, the paper's authors said.

“Los Angeles has seen wildfires before, it will see wildfires again, but the Eaton fire and the Palisades fire were unique, both in their size, their scale and the sheer volume of material that burned,” said Dr. Joseph Ebinger, a Cedars-Sinai cardiologist and the paper's lead author.