What Wildfire Toxicity Can Teach Us About COVID And Treating COPD

As a New York City-trained Pulmonologist, the health of the lungs of NYC has always been a subject near and dear to me. I still vividly remember the day after 9/11 (September 12th, 2001) when I and a bunch of other medical students helped move the rubble at ground zero only to get pretty angry when I learned later that the government had lied to us about the air being clean. It was not. At all.

Over the years, the lungs of NYC have been through a lot (ie. it was hit harder by COVID-19 than anywhere else in the United States), and I have quite a few times over the last years, what's happened there has brought me to tears. Over the last few days, severe smoke from a Wild Fire system in Canada has converged on the Big Apple, and NYC now has the worst air in the United States. My parents live in lower Manhattan and my Mom just told me her building smelled of something burning yesterday and that at one point she even felt dust or ash on her tongue. Whoa.

As a pulmonologist, I was fully aware of the literature demonstrating just how detrimental toxic air conditions (such as those from wildfires) can be for your lungs, and after 9/11 I learned much more about this subject than I ever wanted to know. However, despite that background, working with COVID-19 patients and vaccine-injured patients has given me an entirely new understanding of just how damaging these toxic air conditions can be in a system that is has hit the limit of the inflammation it can tolerate.

My friend and colleague, A Midwestern Doctor, recognized the full implications of how problematic the wildfire system will be for NYC, put together an article on how to mitigate the damage from it last night and sent it to me for my feedback. I think this article is brilliant and has a lot of forgotten information people in New York City need to know right now. Also, it focuses on one of the most important areas of medicine that I am interested in right now which is the use of repurposed drugs and other cheap, safe, and over the counter therapeutic strategies they never taught me in medical school. Please take a look at this and share it with those dear to you over there—nebulized glutathione can help a lot of people.

The full story can be viewed here.