17-minute listen/watch | 12-minute read
Long-distance wildfire smoke is emerging as a serious health risk in the Northeast U.S., where many residents have little experience navigating hazardous air. Conflicting messages from apps, agencies, media, and social networks often leave people unsure what to trust or how to respond. Researchers are uncovering how people interpret these warnings, why uncertainty slows protective action, and what clearer, more reliable communication could do to better protect communities during future smoke events.
Transcript
Manzhu Yu
Long-distance wildfire smoke is no longer the problem of just the western United States. People are getting confusing and mismatched information, and are usually not prepared for this.
Host
Welcome to Growing Impact, a podcast by the Institute of Energy and the Environment at Penn State. Each episode of Growing Impact explores the projects of Penn State researchers who are solving some of the world's most challenging energy and environmental issues. Each project has been funded by the Institute's seed grant program that grows new research ideas into impactful energy and environmental solutions. I'm your host, Kevin Sliman.
Wildfire smoke isn't just a Western problem anymore. It's drifting farther east and affecting communities that have never dealt with it before. In this episode, we talk with researchers studying how people in the Northeast United States are learning about wildfire smoke and how they're adapting to this new reality.
Hello, team. Thank you so much for coming on the episode and discussing your topic of research. I can't wait to get into it.
Manzhu Yu
Thank you, Kevin, for inviting us.
Host
Can we do a round of introductions?
Manzhu Yu
Hi everyone. My name is Manzhu Yu. I'm an associate professor of geography at Penn State. I work on studying extreme weather and using deep learning, particularly spatial, temporal deep learning, to study extreme events. Recently, my work shifted a little bit towards wildfire progression and wildfire smoke, and this is one of the studies that we want to push on wildfire smoke.
Hong Wu
I'm Hong Wu. I am an associate professor of landscape architecture at Penn State, and my research focuses on landscape planning, watershed management, and green infrastructure.
Sarah Rajtmajer
Hi everyone. I'm Sarah Rajtmajer. I'm an associate professor in the College of IST. My research revolves around information integrity. So we think a lot about what are the values that are carried in information. How is information shared and spread and what are ways that we can develop healthy information ecosystems?
Host
We're talking about wildfire smoke and helping people understand the risks and warnings. So, what motivated your team to focus on wildfire smoke in the northeast and, specifically, a region that doesn't typically experience large wildfires?
Manzhu Yu
In 2023, all of us in the eastern United States experienced very unusual wildfire smoke, and a lot of us were not prepared. In the summer 2023, June wildfire events from Canada was the first, but it was never last. So, we want to study how people in this region are prepared for this. How people are receiving or understanding warning messages from either government messaging or from social media or other types of news media, and how they are trying to respond to these messages.
Hong Wu
I think that summer 2023 event was a wake-up call that we need to better integrate social science with modeling and forecasting to try to raise awareness and help mitigate the health impacts. And I think that's primarily my motivation.
Sarah Rajtmajer
From the information sharing perspective, this is a really interesting time where news, and particularly science news, and environmental news, is very dynamic. It's changing rapidly, people are getting their news much more from social media and other informal channels, the apps, and maybe less so from some of the mainstream sources that we were used to. So, this dovetails with concerns about skepticism of experts, skepticism of science.
And so that poses a challenge, especially when, you know, like all weather events, there are some uncertainties in that information which need to be conveyed. But also, the experts need to be trusted. So, it's a really interesting space from the information integrity perspective.
Host
It's interesting because today we have so much information at our fingertips. However, that seems to also be the challenge, right? That we have so many voices out there that can share information that people don't necessarily know what to read, what to trust. And I guess that leads us to our next question of how do people in the northeast currently learn about wildfire smoke events, and what challenges — Sarah, you've already alluded to a number of them — so what challenges exist in helping them trust and act on that information?
Manzhu Yu
So, from literature review and the people who have talked to family and friends and colleagues, people usually rely on smartphone apps. So, on our apps we see some air quality index. When air quality index really goes bad. The calculator is actually provided by EPA, but multiple companies who sell weather information would calculate themselves. So, one of them is what I said smartphone apps.
And then there are channels from EPA, channels from CDC, local news, social media, social media channels of different hosts or of different users. And then word of mouth. The challenges related to receiving so many different types of sources of information is that they might not agree with each other, so there's mixed messaging across apps and outlets. A lot of the outlets share forecasts, and we've all seen those forecasts — like simulations of air quality in the next few hours — those animations that we see on social media.
That's actually very helpful because you can plan ahead of the next few hours. The forecast misalignment is already a scientific or research topic. There is no easy way that we can align these forecasts together in a very short amount of time. So, underestimation, overestimation in forecasts during extreme events is one other challenge, I would say.
Hong Wu
It's really difficult for the general public to distinguish the sources of the information or the forecast. Is it from a simulation? Is it from real measurements? I think there's almost no way in a short time frame that the general public will be able to tell that apart and assess its validity and accuracy.
Sarah Rajtmajer
And I think one more challenge is that the messaging around action is different than the messaging around, you know, the metric. So especially if we see another weather event, okay, it's raining — I mean, that's everyone kind of has a sense already of how they need to behave or what they need to change about their plan or their day, if anything.
But when it comes to something that's a little newer for those of us in the northeast, right, these air quality, you know, what does that mean, really? What is the messaging in terms of what I'm supposed to do differently today, if anything? And I think that's also where a lot of the mixed messaging is coming in.
And, there's one question about what's the air quality and what's the forecast for the smoke. But then there's another question of like, what do we do? And, you know, I think I have noticed a lot of people just kind of seeking advice from their peers in social media about, you know, should I send my kids outside or... Yes, but like, don't run, you know, soccer practice is canceled. And that seems to be really ad hoc right now. And that kind of lack of consistent information and messaging, I think, can cause people to kind of had decision paralysis.
Host
Why is uncertainty such a big issue in air quality information, and how does it affect people's decisions during smoke events.
Manzhu Yu
When people cannot tell how sure a warning is or why these different apps disagree, I would delay my actions. Like why would I have to listen to just one of them or two of them to stay indoors to put on my mask I even have to buy a new mask, right? The normal one is never going to work for the wildfire smoke.
Or do I want to run an air purifier in my house? Or do I want to buy a new purifier? Those actions take time, effort, and money, so I may delay my actions. That's why I think uncertainty is a real issue.
Sarah Rajtmajer
In general, when information is uncertain or there are various sources to pull from, and those sources disagree, as a general rule, that allows that information to be manipulated more easily. Right? So that means that if there are individuals or institutions with specific interests in the information looking one way or the other, they can pull the information that they want. And, you know, I think that's another challenge is that unfortunately, this is a space where you're getting an exact agreed upon metric even and measurement, even from institutions who are all very well intentioned... Right. But this is a really challenging question. Like all weather, however, I think it can be more sort of maliciously plucked or even just of self-interest, not fully malicious, but just, you know, people will always seek out information that is confirmatory of what they want it to be.
Host
So, you're working across multiple disciplines such as, you know, for example, you have geography, environmental health, landscape architecture, and information science. So how does that interdisciplinary approach shape your understanding of the problem and for potential solutions moving forward?
Manzhu Yu
Well, we've never collaborated before, so this is very exciting for me. And each of us contribute to very unique expertise in this project. I'll start and I'll ask my colleagues to talk about their contribution.
So, I study the progression of wildfire smoke. So, I have the exposure of PM 2.5 ozone PM 10. So those air pollutants, how much they are in the air and how different it will be in time. So, I'll probably just contribute to the information related to exposure and spatial temporal changes. But my other colleagues really touched towards the perception of wildfire smoke and the credibility of information.
Hong Wu
That's where I chime in. So, we will conduct a survey, and the survey will evaluate how residents in the northeast perceive wildfire smoke risks, how they access information, and how they respond. In terms of responding, what kind of protective actions they have taken for past events or know to prepare for future events now, such as mobility adjustment and use of purifiers.
And we'll also help identify key information sources that people trust or people use, including social media, the apps that we talked about and traditional media. And then the insights from this survey will inform he focus of the other components by helping to identify what information sources are most relied upon, trusted, and how much we understand or how people perceive their accuracy and what are the impacts of their sources.
The integration of social science will allow us to better identify the problem, and to help design communication strategies that are more accurate and trustworthy, and tailored to community needs.
Sarah Rajtmajer
Our vision is that from the survey responses, we want to do some on-the-ground sort of data collection from social media and mainstream media traces to understand what were and what are the main accounts, institutions, network flows of information in this field. And I think, you know, it's a really nice complement in a sense, because there's something you can get from surveys that, of course, that you can't just get through observational data.
At the same time, you know, you can ask participants about their behaviors, and those may not fully, accurately reflect what's going on in the data at the large scale. So, we're excited about this opportunity to do both. We plan to collect from social media sources that are highlighted in the survey, and understand what are the impacts, what are the responses, even looking at comments and engagement with some of those official announcements and the media coverage.
Host
What are some of the most promising ways we can improve public preparedness for wildfire smoke, even in places that maybe that don't expect it?
Manzhu Yu
One of the things that was mentioned in our previous conversation is the AQI actions related to AQI. So, at AQI 176, really high, really hazardous. What do I do? Like translate this level of AQI to words, particular concrete steps would be very helpful. That is the number one tips to improve preparedness. I think in our group we are not towards that, but in a future collaboration using the results from this pilot study will be really leading towards that Like actionable steps of AQI — actionable steps of messaging, actionable steps of different messaging. Right? So that's all towards what we can get from this pilot project.
Sarah Rajtmajer
I think one thing that would help preparedness is better messaging around climate change, period. Right? So, I think, you know, as long as we have sort of climate denial, it's going to be hard to be prepared. On the other hand, as these events are more frequent, people will learn how to prepare too, unfortunately. So, I think this is sort of symptomatic of a much larger problem around lack of taking climate seriously.
Hong Wu
Proactive education outreach starting now. And I think this podcast is a very good first step, at least for our team in the right direction, so people would know what to do before the next major event rather than scrambling in the moment. And I think we know a lot, and we know enough to start that. We may not know everything — We may not be able to devise community-tailored guidance for every community.
But I think there are some common things that we can try to piece together and form a good story or a good guidelines for the general public, starting now. And I think that workshop that we're going to have at the end of our project with our community partners, we'll be able to generate some of the community-tailored guidance that know eventually we want to transfer to other places.
Host
What's your elevator pitch for this research?
Manzhu Yu
Long-distance wildfire smoke is no longer the problem of just the western United States. People are getting confusing and mismatched information and are usually not prepared for this. The pilot project's result will be a repeatable procedure or playbook that help residents in this area of the country to act faster and safer the next time, and be well prepared.
Host
Thank you all for being on the episode.
Hong Wu
Thank you so much.
Sarah Rajtmajer
Thanks, Kevin.
Manzhu Yu
Thank you.
Host
This was season six, episode two of Growing Impact. Thanks to Manzhu Yu, Hong Wu, and Sarah Rajtmajer for joining me. For a deeper look at their story, visit iee.psu.edu/podcast, where you'll find a video version of this episode, graphics, transcripts, as well as past episodes.
Our communications director is Chris Komlenic, with graphic design and video production by Brenna Buck, marketing and social media by Tori Indivero, and web support by John Stabinger.
Join us next time as we continue our exploration of Penn State research and its growing impact. Thanks for listening.
