Association between wildfire smoke exposure and parents’ adoption of protective behaviours: Exploring the role of objective and subjective smoke exposure
Bibliographic record
Abstract
• Reducing children’s exposure to wildfire smoke is a public health priority • Parents’ self-reported wildfire smoke exposure correlates with air monitoring data • Self-reported exposure better predicts smoke-safe actions than objective exposure • Link between wildfire smoke exposure and protective behaviours may be non-linear Exposure to wildfire smoke poses a significant threat, particularly to children, even at low concentrations. Although several agencies monitor and disseminate air quality data, some parents rely on sensory cues to decide on protective behaviours, such as using air purifiers. We investigated relationships between objective smoke exposure measures (from air monitoring data), parents’ subjective perceptions of smoke exposure (perceived through sight or smell), and their protective behaviours during wildfire smoke events. We combined survey responses from 2,086 parents in wildfire-prone regions of the western US and Canada with three and a half years of wildfire smoke data (2020-2023). Parents’ subjective perceptions of being exposed to smoke were associated with objective smoke exposure measures; however, subjective exposure was more strongly related to protective behaviours than objective exposure measures. Specifically, parents who perceived being exposed to wildfire smoke took, on average, more than one additional protective action ( b =1.11, 95% CI: 0.92‒1.30), compared to those not who did not report smoke exposure. In comparison, every 10 µg/m 3 increase of PM2.5 on smoke days predicted only a 0.23 increase in the number of protective actions adopted ( 95% CI : 0.06‒0.40). Exploratory analyses indicated non-linear relationships between objective smoke exposure and protective behaviours, with initial increases prompting more actions, plateauing at moderate levels, and rising again at higher exposure levels. As wildfire smoke can be harmful even when not visible or detectable by smell, smoke messaging should better connect objective air quality data like the Air Quality Index with parents’ subjective perceptions of wildfire smoke.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".