What Lies Beneath the Smoke? Industrial Emissions and Wildfires

While the direct impact of wildfire smoke on air pollution and human health has been well studied, this project aims to examine a potentially important side effect: Do industrial facilities opportunistically release more air pollution under the camouflage of wildfie smoke? Because wildfire-induced smoke carries a significant amount of air pollutants and reduces visibility, it may hinder residents'ability to monitor and repmt excessive industrial emissions. This could allow pollutive facilities to increase production or cut waste management costs while avoiding public backlash.To study the above question, this project will track the air pollutant concentrations from air quality monitors near industrial plants to those farther away, and test whether the former show a larger increase in air pollution than the latter when both are under wildfire smoke. The project will also conduct cross-sectional analyses in relation to plant utilization (e.g., workday versus non-workdays, industries with idle capacity) and examine the role of local regulatory strictness and socioeconomic conditions in moderating such opportunistic pollution behavior. Overall, the project can potentially highlight a new source of environmental externality caused by wildfire events: firms strategically increasing pollution under the cover of wildfire smoke.