It's merely irritating to most of us, but the smoke puddling up in the Missoula Valley is causing a flurry of excitement for University of Montana researchers.
Black Mountain's fire, just a few air miles from the heart of town, has created a unique stew of smoke that has scientists scrambling to capture it for study.
"Understanding the effects of wildfire smoke is difficult to do because the particulate is so small and we have to harvest it hour upon hour to get enough to work with," said Garon Smith, a UM chemistry professor. "Usually we don't have the opportunity to get enough of the stuff to work with."
Although UM scientists were able to conduct some smoke studies when the Bitterroot Mountains burned in 2000, the test sites were in Missoula and were not up and running yet for some of the valley's smokiest days.
This year, their equipment was set up on the roof of the Missoula City-County Health Department and operating in the earliest days of Missoula-area fires. Because of their quick response, they have high hopes they'll gather the data for a more thorough chemical analysis of the polluted air, said Jean Pfau, a scientist with UM's Center for Environmental Health Sciences.
"We are excited about the particulate sampling because it has traveled a very short distance, and we are expecting to find very different chemical compositions from our sampling in 2000," Pfau said. "It is possible, that with this new information, we could have a better understanding of what chemicals impact peoples' health."
Collecting particulate is the work of three sampling machines that look like Tiki torches.
A pump sucks ambient air into the top of the machine, which filters through tubing that separates out large airborne chunks and collects the smallest particulate - the kind that is so small, it finds its way into peoples' lungs, explained Tony Ward, a UM scientist in charge of monitoring the equipment.
Particulate 2.5 microns in diameter - or matter less than 1/30th the size of human hair - is captured by special filters. Unused, the filters look like alabaster white screens, and after a 24-hour stint in the sampling machines, they come out with a thick gray film and smell like smoke.
When the fires are over and the particulate sampling ends, the UM scientists will flush the filters with solvents - a process similar to percolating coffee - and begin the tedious process of identifying the hundreds of chemical compounds that create the particulate.
As the compounds are identified, the scientists will test the chemicals on mice and various cell structures.
"Once we know the key chemicals that could impact people, the turnaround time for identifying them will be very fast because we will know what to test for in the future," Smith said.
By the end of fall, Smith said, they expect to have preliminary test results in. During that time, they also hope to draw comparisons between the summer smoke of 2003 with particulate readings from past Missoula winter inversions.
"I think this will give us good material to better understand the particulate we are breathing and to determine how bad the smoke is," Tony Ward said. "We know it's bad, but we don't really know how bad."
Reporter Betsy Cohen can be reached at 523-5253 or at bcohen@missoulian.com
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