LA wildfires: Mr. Nueva on the impact of toxic emissions

by Emmanuel O.

Mr. Nueva is the Chemistry teacher for CATS.

Where were you when you found out about the fire?

I was at home. I’m pretty sure what I was doing. I was on Reddit and I saw a post about all the fires.

Were you affected by the fire or any of your family members?

I personally was not affected. I live kinda far away from here, I’m a little bit closer to the Altadena fire the one by Pasadena. I was a little closer to that but I was thankfully not affected by it.

Did the fire affect any aspect your job?

Yeah, since I work in education they shut down the school for a couple days so I did not go to work because they shut down the schools around here.

Do you think having school off for 2 days was a good idea or would we have been fine?

I think it was a good idea to shut down the schools because it seem the air quality was really bad a lot of students felt really sick because of how much smoke was in the air and we weren’t sure how bad the fire was going to be if it was going to get worse so I think it was a good idea for them to shut down the school.

In a chemistry standpoint how does the fires ash affect the human body?

For one when things get burnt, like all the trees the building materials, a lot of particulates get shot into the air. So, all these, I guess you can say things, particulates get stuck in the air you start to breathe it in and it could start irritating peoples lungs and throats. That’s one way, chemistry standpoint, when wood burns, you’re burning a lot of like carbon and so that starts to produce carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and so that also gets into the air as well.

What kind of elements are in fires?

To start a fire you need three things. You need a fuel which is all the wood building materials. You need oxygen and the third you need heat, so you know in all these fires it’s fire, fire starts it and it consumes all the oxygen and it burns all the wood which contains carbon.