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PASADENA, Calif.—Nicole Byrne observed with concern from her kitchen as Parham Azimi, a researcher from Harvard University, organized sample bottles next to her running tap.
As the alarm on his phone indicated that the water pipes had been flushed for the necessary five minutes, Azimi proceeded to fill the collection bottles and prepare them for shipment to a laboratory in San Diego later that day.
Byrne was aware that it could take several weeks to receive results for the majority of the samples, but she felt reassured knowing she was one step closer to finding answers.
Despite living nearly two miles away from Altadena—a community severely affected by the wildfires that ignited in Los Angeles on January 7—her rented bungalow on Loma Vista Street in Pasadena was situated downwind of the fire zone.
Byrne, a therapist with two young children, along with her husband Jonathan Hull, who holds a Ph.D. in chemistry, possessed a heightened awareness of toxic environmental exposures. Byrne noted, “We know too much for comfort. Yet we lacked a reliable method for obtaining answers.”
Azimi was collecting water samples as part of a groundbreaking collaborative research initiative involving experts in health, environmental science, data analysis, and wildfire risk assessment from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health, the University of California, Davis, and the University of Texas at Austin.
Founded with support from the Spiegel Family Fund, the LA Fire Health Study Consortium was established in late January following the devastating wildfires that claimed 29 lives, obliterated over 16,000 structures—primarily in Altadena and Pacific Palisades—and exposed millions to hazardous substances including particulate matter, gases, chemicals, heavy metals, asbestos, PFAS, microplastics, and various other pollutants.
The consortium has committed to a decade of research while also ensuring that Los Angeles receives health information in a timely manner. This initiative gained particular urgency after the US Army Corps of Engineers announced in early February that it would not conduct soil sampling in the aftermath of the fires.
