In January, one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history ravaged several neighborhoods in Los Angeles County, including Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The immediate toll was staggering: at least 30 lives lost, more than 200,000 people evacuated, and more than 18,000 homes and structures destroyed. Moreover, a recent study estimated the fires were linked to more than 440 excess deaths in the region.
Yet even these numbers don’t capture the full extent of the damage. The disaster’s effects on our brains are only beginning to emerge.
As coordinators of the Neuro Climate Working Group, an international consortium dedicated to studying and addressing the impact of climate change on brain health, we have been working for years with our members to understand and document the neurological effects of environmental disasters and related stressors. Emerging research from our network and colleagues reveals a disturbing pattern: Sometimes the most severe effects on brain development, health, and function don’t manifest until months to years after exposure, with some impacts not fully apparent until the next generation.
The Southern California wildfires were no isolated event. Recent blazes in Canada, France, and elsewhere offer the latest reminder that these threats are global in scope.
And as rising temperatures extend fire seasons deeper into winter months, the intensifying smoke exposure and cascading health impacts stemming from California’s January fires will become increasingly common the world over. Understanding and pricing the neurological and mental toll of such disasters will be critical for developing effective public health responses and protecting vulnerable populations.
Contemporary evidence is alarming. Exposure to wildfire smoke and trauma during critical developmental windows can fundamentally alter brain structure and function. One groundbreaking study found that prenatal exposure to air pollution — the kind generated by wildfires, for example — was associated with measurable changes in fetal brain morphology, including reduced cortical folding and increased cerebrospinal fluid space. These changes were most pronounced when exposure occurred during mid-to-late pregnancy.
The implications are profound. Pregnant women who inhaled hazardous wildfire smoke during those January days in L.A. may give birth to children with subtle but significant alterations in brain development. These young people may face increased risks of attention problems, learning disabilities, and behavioral challenges that may not become apparent until they reach school age.
Impacts extend far beyond pregnancy. Recent research has illustrated that exposure to fine particulate matter from wildfires is a greater risk factor for dementia than that from other sources (like car exhaust). Similarly, a study on California’s 2018 Camp Fire revealed that direct exposure to trauma from climate disasters fundamentally alters cognitive decision-making abilities. Using brain-imaging technology, colleagues found that wildfire survivors showed impaired reward processing and altered neural activity in regions essential for attention and executive function. Most troubling, these changes persisted for more than a year after the disaster.
Children are particularly vulnerable. One recent study tracking kids exposed to air pollution during early development found decreased cognitive performance and altered brain structure that can persist into adolescence. The developing brain is exquisitely sensitive to environmental toxins, and the cocktail of pollutants released when neighborhoods burn — including heavy metals, plastics, and dozens of chemical compounds (including the fire retardants used to extinguish the flames) — poses unprecedented risks.
Certainly, some of these risks may manifest in the short term. But communities are just beginning to understand the long-term effects of exposure to the pollutants that poisoned their air, soil, and water and continue to do so as debris cleanup kicks up more pollution.
Understanding these long-term health impacts is particularly complex because the neurological effects in question aren’t limited to smoke exposure. The psychological trauma of losing homes, communities, and loved ones creates what researchers call “climate trauma”: a distinct form of mental and cognitive health impairment that affects brain function in measurable ways. Behavioral and psychological effects have been documented in recent mental health surveys of L.A. and Maui wildfire survivors. Brain scans of disaster survivors show hyperactivity in regions associated with stress and anxiety, coupled with impaired function in areas responsible for decision-making and emotional regulation.
Perhaps most concerning, these neurological impairments appear to compound across generations. Emerging research suggests that trauma and environmental exposures can alter gene expression patterns that are passed down to children and grandchildren, a phenomenon known as epigenetic inheritance. It may take decades to understand the damage of these recent wildfires.
Despite this mounting evidence, our current disaster response systems are woefully unprepared to address neurological health impacts. Emergency protocols focus on immediate medical needs and short-term shelter, with little consideration for protecting brain health or monitoring long-term neurological outcomes. Insurance policies don’t cover the specialized assessments needed to detect subtle cognitive changes, and mental health resources remain severely underfunded. Moreover, disruptions to health care systems interrupt the ongoing care on which people with neurological or mental health conditions rely, which can accelerate disease progression or worsen symptoms.
We need to change our approach. As climate disasters become more frequent and severe, protecting neurological health must become a central component of emergency preparedness and recovery efforts. We need coordinated systems to monitor brain health impacts in exposed populations, particularly children and pregnant women. We need early intervention programs to support optimal brain development in affected communities. And we need policies that account for the full neurological cost of climate change when making decisions about everything from urban planning to health care resource allocation.
These fires also underscore critical questions of justice. Communities of color and low-income neighborhoods, already disproportionately exposed to air pollution, bear the heaviest burden of wildfire impacts. These same communities often lack access to the health care resources needed to address neurological consequences, creating a cycle of environmental and health disparities that will persist for generations.
Moving forward, we must fundamentally rethink how we measure disaster impacts. Property damage and immediate casualties represent only a fraction of the true community cost. The neurological toll — cognitive impairments, learning disabilities, attention problems, and developmental delays — will affect countless families for decades to come. Economic analyses that ignore these hidden costs dramatically underestimate the true price of climate change.
Research alone is insufficient. We need public health officials to take neurological protection seriously, urban planners to consider brain health in resilience planning, and policymakers to recognize that the fight against climate change is fundamentally a fight for the future of human cognition.
While we cannot undo the fires, we can still work to protect the developing brains of the next generation if we act with the urgency this crisis demands.
Fortunately, the brain — especially the developing brain — is remarkably resilient. Thanks to its neuroplasticity, children often have the capacity to recover from environmental insults, rebuild neural connections, and adapt their behavior, given the right support, safety, and care. But time is not on our side. The climate emergency is also a neurological emergency, and we ought to treat it as such.
Burcin Ikiz is an award-winning neuroscientist, the founder of EcoNeuro, the chair of the International Neuro Climate Working Group at Columbia University, and an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry at Stanford University. Clayton Page Aldern is a senior data reporter at Grist, a research affiliate at the University of Washington’s Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology, and the author of “The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.”
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