Quantifying the invisible: A literature review and history of research on the health effects of wildfire smoke

The objective of this scoping review is to provide an overview of issues affecting the results of studies on the health effects of non-occupational wildfire exposure. Although it is well established that wildfire smoke is harmful to people with chronic respiratory conditions, research on other health impacts have often found inconsistent results or small effect sizes. These results are often misinterpreted to mean that wildfire smoke has a negligible effect on non-respiratory outcomes such as cardiovascular health or mortality. However, what these results actually reflect is the complexity of determining public exposure to wildfire smoke, as well as variations in how researchers have chosen to address the issues raised by these complexities