The vast plumes of smoke and ash from these fires are threatening the health of people miles away.

It's led both the Biden administration and Los Angeles County to declare public health emergencies.

Ali Rogan spoke with Dr. Russell Bohr and assistant professor of medicine and public health at UCLA.

Dr. Boar, thank you so much for joining us.

You've lived on the West Coast for a long time.

How does this fire compare to others that you've experienced?

And what sort of symptoms are folks presenting in your clinical practice right now?

It's been a very busy few days and lots of calls and messages from patients and lots of folks coming into clinic feeling more short of breath, more chest tightness and generally just worse than their baseline and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to optimize people's respiratory medications to compensate for that, but also a lot of time doing counseling on how to best keep themselves safe, given these difficult circumstances that we're experiencing here in LA right now.

What sort of health issues tend to crop up when there's fires like this?

We worry the most about people with chronic heart and lung disease, and that's because small particles can actually work their way all the way down,

not only into the deepest parts of the lung, but even sometimes transit into the bloodstream

through the lung. And so what we worry about most is acute flare-ups of cough, shortens of

breath and wheezing, especially in the lungs, and that can affect even people without pre-existing

lung disease. Or for people that do have preexisting lung disease, to flare up

inflammation to the point of meeting medical attention, if the inflammation gets so bad that

people aren't able to get enough oxygen into their body. Even short-term high doses of exposure,

like we see when the air quality index is above 200,

can be very hazardous to people who are otherwise healthy. And I tell people, you know,

even if you're a seasoned athlete, this is not the time to be going outside and taking a nice

hike up to the top of the hills to see if you can see the fire or not. This is affecting everyone.

You'll even hear in my voice right now a little congestion because my allergies are acting up and I haven't even

been outside today. So despite our best efforts, it can be really rough. And what are some of those

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