Breathing Fire: Exploring the Relationship Between Asthma and Forest Fire in California

The main focus of this project was to determine if there is a relationship between asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits and fires in the state of California. We aimed to pave way towards establishing a connection between natural disasters and respiratory distress. During our analysis we faced many obstacles, mainly data limitations and uncontrollable variables. After collecting and analyzing the available data, it was determined that there is no relationship between the rates of ED visits due to asthma and the amount of forest burned over 10 year time period (2006-2015). While we failed to establish a relationship in that regard, we determined that there is significant variation in asthma rates across regions of California.