Here’s what we do and don’t know about what’s in the smoke from the Boyle Heights fire — and more UCLA media | UCLA
LAist reported on what experts know so far about the contents in the smoke released by a refrigerated warehouse fire that has burned in Boyle Heights for nearly a week. Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, says air quality indexes may capture the concentration of particulate matter in the air, but not necessarily the specific toxins in them. Zhu, who is studying the impacts of the 2025 LA wildfires, says she suspects at least some types of health-harming heavy metals are likely to be present. (Zhu was also quoted by the Los Angeles Daily News.) Read more about UCLA in today’s New York Times, Newsweek and others.