ulian Bell, M.D. with Providence Pulmonology

Ulian Bell, M.D.

With Providence Pulmonology, talks about the health impacts of wildfire smoke.

From the oregon shakespeare festival.

Watching out for you, this is newswatch 12 at 4."

With the fires that we are seeing now, how does the smoke from these wildfires affect us?

Joining me now is dr. julian bell from providence.

So how does this smoke impact someone in a generally good health?

Well, usually the smoke can make people feel short of breath and, um, you know, it can be, uh, it can cause a lot of, uh, anxiety, i suppose, for having a lot of stress around.

There's actually quite a big psychological component to being surrounded by smoke all the time.

But basically it can.

It causes mild shortness of breath in most people.

If there are people who do not know that they have any lung disease, that in whom the smell can potentially trigger an asthma attack, but that would be an unusual situation.

Pmarily it just makes people feel mildly short of preps.

If you're healthy, what precaution should people take?

If we have days of poor air quality, well, the main things too focused on are really avoiding the smoke, basically.

So, and 95 respirator, which is a mask, uh, that's usually includes something that ties around the back of your head, not the kind that had the surgical style loops that go behind your ears wearing one of those end 95 masks and staying in doors, uh, trying to make sure you have a hepa filter, which is, uh, a high efficiency air purifier.

Or having a hepa filter cartridges that go into your hvac system are the main ways of preventing significant health impacts.

What are the differences between the experiencing effects of smoke versus the symptoms of now the ongoing covid-19 pandemic?

Well, so the smoke generally for, so i guess i would sort of think of different categories of people.

If you're a healthy person, the smoke, you know, assuming that you're trying to protect yourself from the smoke in a sort of a generally responsible way, uh, this month is likely to make you feel somewhat short of breath in worst case, sort of a scenario.

If you actually have kind of at 19, there's a range of symptoms, as i'm sure your viewers know.

And so you may be completely asymptomatic, but generally speaking, i would expect that you would feel like you had the, uh, it's reasonably likely that you would also have fevers cough.

You also know that you have lack of, or a lot of your viewers would know that you, one of the early symptoms is losing the sense of smell and taste.

Another thing that your viewers may be interested to look into is getting a pulse oximeter, which is a device that you wear on your finger that can check your oxygen level.

If you actually had a significant disease, you may find that your oxygen levels either run at 90% or lower.

But generally, if you're a healthy, you would feel like you had the flu.

If you have covered, if you feel like if you have done terribly sick, it's possible to just stay at home self isolate.

If you're feeling sick, if he should go to the hospital, then go to an urgent care or to a hospital, um, to get further care.

If you have emphysema or some other lung disease, the main things i think that we're differentiated would be.

Instead of just feeling short of breath again in covid-19 you would have, you would probably feel like you have the flu you'd have fevers.

You might have loss of sense of smell and taste, uh, with, and i think if you had somebody that had heart disease, you know, you had generally, i mean, these are the same sort of general symptoms. i think that would help most people differentiate, just smoke exposure to covid-19.

So, um, so for smoking.

Sure.

I think for most people it makes them feel mildly short of breath.

If you have emphysema, it would feel like an emphysema attack and you have asthma.

It would feel like an estimate if you're, if you have covid-19.

Um, you're talking about things that are more like loss of sense of smell and taste general malaise, feeling like you have the flu.

If you can, if you have a pulse oximeter, i'm seeing that you have a low oxygen saturation is also a very worrisome sign.

Dr. bell.

Thank