Annual Death Toll from US Wildfire Smoke Could Climb to 70,000 by 2050, New Study Says

October 7, 2025 | 02:58 pm

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - A recent study from the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability revealed that the death toll from wildfires could reach 70,000 in the United States by 2050. This estimate pertains to deaths caused by exposure to wildfire smoke pollution containing fine particulate matter or PM2.5.

"Our understanding of who is vulnerable to this exposure is much broader than we thought," said Marshall Burke, a social environmental science professor at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as quoted from the official Stanford website on September 18.

The impact of wildfires on mortality rates has been published in the journal Nature on September 18, 2025, titled 'Wildfire Smoke Exposure and Mortality Burden in the US Under Climate Change'. This article was authored by 13 combined scientists from campuses in the UK and the United States.

The researchers' projections were obtained from analyzing state-level mortality data in the US from 2006 to 2019. This data was linked to fluctuations in deaths due to PM2.5 concentration from ground-level wildfire smoke, wind variations, and air particle movement.

The researchers also utilized machine learning-based artificial intelligence (AI) to predict changes in wildfire emissions in a particular area. Changes in these conditions can affect smoke concentrations in other areas. The change in smoke concentration is associated with historical variations in deaths. Climate models were also utilized to project future forest fire activities, including smoke levels and health impacts.

As a result, the researchers claimed that PM2.5-containing smoke exposure under emission scenarios could increase by more than 70 percent to 70,000 deaths per year. This figure exceeds the approximately 40,000 annual deaths associated with smoke from 2011 to 2020. The projected surge in annual deaths due to smoke exposure will occur in California (with an additional 5,060 deaths), New York (1,810), Washington (1,730), Texas (1,700), and Pennsylvania (1,600).

In this study, the researchers projected that the number of smoke-related deaths, with climate influence, would still exceed 60,000 lives per year by 2050. This means that the impact of wildfires would still be severe, even if global temperatures are successfully kept below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of this century.

Minghao Qiu, an assistant professor at Stony Brook University, said the climate models currently used for policy-making do not account for the impact of wildfire smoke on human deaths, despite its very real threat to healthcare and its effect on mortality rates. "It's like leaving the main character out of a movie," Minghao said.

Editor’s Choice: 5 Ways to Protect Yourself from Wildfire Smoke Exposure

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