Wildfires and brush burning

General

• Controlled burning more than 9 miles away from Sheffield caused some residents to leave from breathing difficulties and PM2.5 exceeded 40 micrograms per cubic metre of air (µg/m³) and peaked at 70µg/m³ for 6 hours (Weber et al., 2023)
• • Repeated peat burnings and air pollution have led the peatlands to become degraded (Brownlow et al., 2025, originally published in The Conversation)
    
    • 60% of upland peat excluded from burning regulations
    • 95% of PM2.5 monitors are located in urban areas, meaning rural fire smoke is rarely registered
    • Limited regulatory funding and prosecution rate for unlicensed activity
  Wildfire smoke raises ozone levels by up to 30% (University of Utah, 2025)
• New understanding of toxicity in wildfire smoke (Air Quality News, 2025)
• Research Data, Tools, and Insights Needed to Reduce Environmental Exposures and Public Health Risks from Wildland Fires in the United States (ACS Publications, 2026)
• During the July 2026 Pennine wildfires, monitoring of 23 Greater Manchester homes found smoke penetrated indoors despite closed windows — average bedroom PM2.5 rose from 2.7 to 7.8 µg/m³, every monitored home exceeded the WHO daily guideline on the worst day, and effects reached homes 60 km from the fires (University of Manchester, 2026).
• Smoke from landscape fires kills an estimated 1.5 million people a year — more than floods, storms and heat combined — and Canada's 2023 wildfires alone were linked to 82,000 early deaths, a third of them in the US and a quarter in Europe (The Guardian, 2026).
• Around 10% of the UK's fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution comes from biomass burned abroad (The Guardian, 2026).