Exposure to extreme heat can cause heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and even heart attacks. Breathing in the smoke from wildfires that is inhaled deep into the lungs can have long-lasting dangerous effects on your body. Each is bad enough on its own.
A combination of both, however, has far worse effects. The impact is so severe that such a mixture doubles your risk of suffering a fatal heart attack, according to a new wide-ranging study.
Not only that but the higher the number of days on which both smoke and extreme heat are present at one time the greater is the danger to our heart health, the study finds. The damage accumulates day after day.
Such a combined impact already has hit a number of U.S. cities, particularly on the east coast. Experts predict such joint impacts are likely to occur more often in future years under the influence of climate change.