Rutgers Health professors receive their fourth grant to study wildfire impacts on human health
Following grants to examine the Los Angeles wildfires' impact on wildfire-related respiratory health and air quality, Rutgers Health researchers have received additional funding from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences to establish a research program in collaboration with Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
The $4 million research program will examine how wildfire smoke may affect fertility and reproductive health.
Philip Demokritou, Henry Rutgers Chair and a professor of nanoscience and environmental bioengineering at the Rutgers School of Public Health and the School of Engineering, and Shuo Xiao, an associate professor at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, will lead the project within the Environmental Occupational Health Science Institute in collaboration with Audrey Gastkins, an associate professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health.
Demokritou, also the founding director of the Rutgers Environmental Health Nanoscience and Advanced Materials Center (NAMC), discusses the goals of the fertility-focused research and its broader public health implications.
What are you hoping to explore through this new research program?
Our goal is to understand how wildfire smoke exposure affects fertility and reproductive health.
Wildfires are no longer rare events - they are increasing in frequency and intensity, fueled by extreme weather. Beyond the devastating destruction of homes and ecosystems, wildfire smoke contains a complex mixture of ultrafine particles, toxic gases and combustion by-products from human-made structures. These exposures have been linked to respiratory diseases, cardiovascular problems, adverse birth outcomes and now - emerging evidence suggests - fertility and reproductive health impacts.
The program will integrate laboratory toxicology, exposure science and epidemiology to determine how complex mixtures of ultrafine particles, gases and combustion by-products from wildfires influence reproductive outcomes.
How does this program build on existing wildfire research?
This program is a natural extension of our ongoing research at NAMC and the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute. Previously, we focused on respiratory health and air quality impacts, including ongoing studies of the Los Angeles 2025 wildfires and the Canadian wildfires in the summer of 2023 that affected air quality, micro-climate and health in the New York City and New Jersey areas.
With this new research program, we will expand into reproductive health, combining our knowledge of exposure science with mechanistic toxicology and population-level analyses to address an underexplored dimension of wildfire impacts.
What makes this research unique compared to previous wildfire studies?
There are three main distinguishing features.
First, it's multi-institutional. The principal investigators will be supported by several co-investigators across the three institutions who will provide specific expertise in biostatistics, spatio-temporal modeling of wildfire-borne particulate matter, analytical chemistry and exposomics, perinatal epidemiology and reproductive endocrinology and infertility.
Second, it's transdisciplinary, integrating lab toxicology, exposure science and spatio-temporal modeling of wildfire particulate matter and reproductive epidemiology.
Third, it focuses specifically on fertility, a health outcome that has received little attention in wildfire research.
To address emerging environmental pollutants and their impact on health, we need to put together transdisciplinary research teams across institutions and develop the necessary tools to address the physicochemical complexity of those pollutants and study them across the exposure-disease continuum.
This project achieves this, and the combination of scope, methods and focus is unprecedented in the environmental health science field.
What methods will the team use to study fertility and reproductive health impacts?
We will use a combination of approaches across the exposure to disease continuum. Laboratory studies will generate simulated wildfires and assess the physicochemical properties of wildfire particulate matter, which will be used in mechanistic toxicological studies using cellular and animal models to understand its reprotoxic effects.
At the human population level, epidemiological studies will examine reproductive outcomes in exposed populations in California, and advanced geospatial-temporal modeling using satellite data will quantify spatio-temporal variations of wildfire exposures.
By integrating these approaches, we can link specific wildfire exposures to potential reproductive health effects.
How will the findings from this program benefit public health?
By understanding the links between wildfire smoke and reproductive health, we can provide evidence-based guidance to public health officials, policymakers, and community leaders. The research may inform interventions, advisories and preparedness strategies, ensuring that reproductive health is considered alongside respiratory and cardiovascular risks during wildfire events.
Working across institutions and disciplines allows us to address these complex questions rigorously and ensures that our findings are comprehensive and applicable to real-world public health challenges.
