Wildfire and infant health: a geospatial approach to estimating the health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure

Abstract

ABSTRACT We estimate the effects of wildfire smoke exposure on infant health. Exposure to wildfire smoke is determined using the latitude and longitude coordinates corresponding to each infant’s home address and a fine-scaled spatial dataset of wildfire smoke plumes constructed in GIS from satellite images of the landscape. Using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, model estimates show that exposure to wildfire smoke leads to a .034 increase in the probability of low birthweight.