How Real Is Smoke Brain?
Researchers are only just starting to ask how wildfire smoke affects cognition.
Keith Bein is a storm chaser—or whatever the wildfire equivalent of that is. An air-quality researcher at UC Davis, he drives toward fires, grabbing air samples, analyzing some on the scene and transporting others back to a lab for assessment. He knows what it’s like to inhale wildfire smoke. “I’ve been in situations where the air pollution is just so thick, you just can’t think about anything else except How do I escape this? or How do I get out of this?” he told me. “You really have to kind of force yourself to focus.”
Call it “smoke brain”: that foggy feeling that comes from breathing soot-clogged air. Lots
