MONDAY, Dec. 29, 2025 (HealthDay News) -- Wildfire smoke exposure is associated with worse pediatric asthma control, according to a study published online Dec. 11 in Environmental Health.
Anna K. Maassel, from the University of Vermont in Burlington, and colleagues extracted data from the electronic health records of youth aged 3 to 21 years diagnosed with asthma to assess the association between wildfire smoke exposure and pediatric asthma control in Vermont and Upstate New York using three clinical measures of asthma control. Asthma control was compared in the smoke-affected summer of 2023 versus the largely unaffected summers of 2022 and 2024, controlling for pollen exposure. The association between asthma control and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) during the summer of 2023 was examined using PM2.5 values obtained within ZIP codes.
A total of 1,217 encounters were included in the study sample. The researchers found that for two of the three clinical measures, asthma control was significantly worse in the severely smoke-affected summer of 2023 versus 2022, but no difference was seen for any clinical measures comparing 2023 with 2024. No significant associations were seen between ZIP code-level PM2.5 and asthma control for any of the three clinical measures within summer 2023.
"I think our findings suggest that there is potential for wildfire smoke, even hundreds of miles away, to impact a child's health," coauthor Keith J. Robinson, from the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine, said in a statement.