The Conversation

Yes, breathing wildfire smoke can harm your health

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 22:09:03 +0000

Yes, breathing wildfire smoke can harm your health Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 16:09

Colleen E. Reid

Here’s what you can do to protect yourself

Wildfire smoke from fires burning in Canada and northern Minnesota has been pouring across the Great Lakes and northeastern U.S. states, turning skies an eerie shade of orange. In the West, smoke has also been spreading into communities in Ģ��Ӱ�� and neighboring states as more wildfires burn in hot, dry conditions in July 2026.

University of Ģ��Ӱ�� environmental health researcher Colleen Reid explains what’s in that smoke and why breathing it is a health concern everyone should be aware of.

Colleen Reid is a Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder associate professor of geography and director of the public health program.

What is in wildfire smoke?

Wildfire smoke is a complex mixture that includes nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and particulate matter. When homes or buildings also burn, they can release an even more toxic stew of chemicals from burning electronics, furniture, plastics, paints and much more.

What you see when you see a smoke plume or when the air is hazy with wildfire smoke are the tiny particles that are too small to fall to the ground right away with gravity.

These particles, which scientists call particulate matter, are very small – we measure them in microns. When you breathe them in, they can harm your health. The smaller the particles, the deeper they can get into your lungs and body.

You may have heard the term PM2.5. It means particles that are 2.5 microns or smaller in diameter, many times smaller than the width of a human hair. High concentrations of these particles in the air during wildfire smoke episodes are what trigger air quality alerts.

Has wildfire smoke been increasing recently, and why?

Yes, wildfires have become more frequent and more intense just in the past couple of decades, and when wildfires become more frequent and intense, so does the smoke.

Scientists have found that wildfires are becoming more frequent due to a variety of factors that include increases in fire weather – hot, dry, windy conditions that fuel the spread of fires due to climate change – as well as other natural and human factors. The reasons for the increases in wildfires vary in different parts of the world.

Other studies have found that wildfire smoke makes up an increasing portion of the PM2.5 in the air in the U.S., and in many areas it is offsetting the decreases in air pollution that the U.S. has gained through regulations of industrial and vehicle emissions under the Clean Air Act.

How could wildfire smoke affect my health?

Some effects of breathing wildfire smoke include shortness of breath, coughing, itchy or watery eyes, headaches, rashes and itchiness. But smoke can cause more serious harm. Numerous epidemiological studies have shown that hospitalizations and emergency department visits for asthma and other respiratory diseases increase during wildfire smoke events.

After you breathe in the particles, they cause inflammation and oxidative stress, and they can move into the blood and spread throughout the body, affecting other organ systems.

Breathing wildfire smoke has been associated with higher risk of preterm births and other issues during pregnancy, and potentially cardiovascular problems such as heart attacks and strokes, although the evidence for these effects are more mixed.

The longer-term health effects of wildfire smoke are less clear, but it is a growing area of research.

New York City skyline shrouded in wildfire smoke from wildfires in 2023. (Photo: Ahmer Kalam/Unsplash)

Where can I learn more about wildfire smoke risks where I live?

The first thing to do to protect yourself from wildfire smoke is to know how bad the smoke is and how long it is going to last.

One great place to get information for where you live on current wildfire smoke is fire.airnow.gov. You can zoom in on the map to where you live and find color-coded circles reflecting data from both U.S. EPA air-quality monitors and PurpleAir sensors that people have put in their homes.

The colors show the level of PM2.5 at that location and suggest the associated health risk.

To find out how wildfire smoke is expected to change over time in North America, you can look at maps from FireSmoke Canada and the U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program.

What can I do to protect myself and my family from wildfire smoke?

First of all, depending on the level of the air quality index where you are, there are different recommendations. When wildfire smoke reaches unhealthy levels, stay indoors as much as possible, with doors and windows shut to keep the wildfire smoke out.

If you have an air cleaner, use it, but check the filter, as filters can fill up quickly. Similarly, check the filter on your home HVAC system and replace it if needed.

If you have to go outside, consider wearing a well-fitting N95, KN95 or KF94 mask. These masks can protect you from inhaling particles in the air around you. Looser masks, such as surgical masks, mostly protect others from what you breathe out instead. They do not have a tight seal around your mouth, and when you breathe in, the air with all of the particles can find its way around the sides of the mask.

Having a tight fit of the mask to your face is important so that when you breathe, the air is going through the mask and capturing the smoke particles rather than letting them into your body where they cause harm.

If your home is leaky and you can see haze inside, consider going to a public space, such as a library or mall, with a good HVAC system. Some municipalities have designated clean air spaces where anyone can go.

Colleen E. Reid is an associate professor in the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Geography.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Top photo: Fachy Marín/Unsplash

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels'

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:49 +0000

'It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels' Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:25

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Sanggay Tashi

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities

China is building some of the world’s largest solar farms on the Tibetan Plateau, where nomadic people have grazed herds of animals for millennia.

It’s not the first time Tibetan regions have become a major source of renewable energy in China. Since the mid-1990s, many Tibetan communities have lived alongside hydropower stations.

Now, with vast open landscapes and high elevations that provide ideal conditions for harnessing solar and wind energy, many pastoral lands have become key sites for large-scale renewable energy projects.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Anthropology.

As part of my ethnographic research, I spoke to number of people in this area, offering a rare look at how large-scale energy development is affecting nomadic communities.

Herding yaks on solar farms

I spent time in a nomadic community located about 100 miles (161 km) southeast of Xining city, the capital of Qinghai province.

Beginning in 2017 and accelerating more recently, regional subsidiaries of energy companies such as PowerChina have built three solar panel power plants – enough to generate about 1 gigawatt of power – and a dozen wind turbines on the area’s open grasslands.

Sandy, desert-type land is well known to be suitable for solar and wind farms. Yet the grasslands and many other pastoral areas turned into solar farms are not sandy deserts. They are productive grazing land where Tibetans have herded yaks and sheep for generations.

Parts of what was once open fine alpine grassland, which Tibetans call pangtang where herders moved freely and gazed across the boundless horizon, are now covered by dense rows of solar panels. It remains unclear how these sites comply with China’s grassland conservation regulations. Other solar projects elsewhere in China have reportedly been investigated for environmental violations.

Walking through the sites feels like moving through a dense forest of iron pillars rising into the air. “It is easy to get lost in this jungle of solar panels,” Tsering, a local observer, told me as we walked between long rows of panels on a windy winter day in 2023.

That day, I also met Dolma, a local Dokpa, or nomad, herding yaks under solar panels. As we talked, she told me the solar farm had changed the experience of herding. She said, “I am used to herding on open grassland. So, herding under these glass panels feels like something is wrapping around my head. It feels very depressing.”

Individual and collective tensions

These energy projects in nomadic communities are presented as part of of national efforts to modernize rural areas, bring capital to local communities and promote renewable energy development as part of China’s clean energy and carbon reduction agenda.

But their implementation brings tensions and contradictions in the communities where they are located.

Tibetans walk through a solar farm in Tibet, while animals graze in the distance. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Based on my conversations with more than 20 people in the community, some view them as good economic opportunities and are envious of those whose grazing lands were selected for lease. Others oppose them, saying they “open the gate” for outsiders to appropriate local land for short-term financial gain by a few.

As more outsiders move in and the landscape changes with these energy projects, the overall concern that I observed from talking to different people is that the land that generations have lived on and protected may not retain the same sense of home in the future.

Tsering, who guided me through the solar farms, is very critical of those who agreed to lease land to solar farms, saying, “I may sound pretentious, but these days people are like grass growing on a wall – easily swayed by the slightest breeze of money.”

Since the 1950s, all land in China has been either government-owned or collectively owned; private land ownership is not allowed. Individuals may hold fixed-term “land-use rights” that can be transferred, sold or leased. In the 2000s, the government allocated land to individual families in nomadic areas of Qinghai and granted them 50-year “grassland use certificates."This enables the locals to raise livestock on the land and lease it to others. Most certificates are set to expire in 2050.

Some holders of grassland use certificates have leased their land to energy farms. In the area I studied, those leases typically are for around 25 years, to align with the remaining term of local grassland use rights. What will happen when these land use rights expire remains unknown.

Yaks graze beneath solar farm panels on the Tibetan Plateau. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Money matters

In practice, leasing is extremely complex. When I asked a dozen families about their official contracts with the energy companies, several people said they signed it without fully understanding what it said.

"The only thing people made sure to know is how much money they are receiving,” one person said to me. The documents included long and complicated legal or technical language in Chinese, some of which was orally translated into Tibetan during the signing, because many nomads who are heads of households and more than 40 years old can’t read either Chinese or Tibetan.

Negotiations and leasing decisions are often carried out between company representatives and a small number of heads of households, brought together with the help of local officials. That leaves many residents uninformed about the terms and conditions of the agreements.

Households that lease grazing land to energy projects receive a one-time payment that depends on the amount of land involved and which company is seeking the lease. From 2017 to 2026, residents have told me they received offers between 3,000 and 4,000 yuan (US$440 to $587) for each mu, a unit of area equivalent to about 0.16 acres. Those rates have resulted in payments between 40,000 and 100,0000 yuan ($7,300 to $147,000) per household.

Human relations with the land

The energy companies’ contracts treat local households and land as individually owned properties in financial transactions. But local Indigenous communities have a different understanding and relationship to the environment.

Socially and historically, and regardless of the government policies on land ownership, Tibetans have perceived pastoral land as communal and experienced it as inhabited by all kinds of beings besides humans, including deities, animals, insects and other visible and invisible beings that are important in the Tibetan cosmological worldview. The energy planners often disregard these local ways of understanding and relating to the land.

During a dinner conversation, four local residents told me about one of these deeper spiritual concerns. During the construction of transmission lines to carry the solar power to users, they said, several transmission poles were placed very close to a labtse of a neighboring community. A labtse is a sacred site where an important mountain deity is believed to reside and where community members make regular offerings.

A solar farm under construction in eastern Tibet. (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

When locals asked for the poles to be moved, the energy developers suggested they would cover the cost of relocating the labtse instead – which, culturally, cannot be done, and if it were would require direction from high-ranking religious figures.

For the local people, however, this was not a matter of compensation but of protecting the deity from being stabbed by the giant poles. Some residents were even willing to pay the planners to move the poles. After a series of negotiations, the poles were eventually moved a short distance from the labtse.

Living alongside energy farms

Herding on energy farms comes with new challenges.

When the solar panels were installed, excavation for support posts and underground cables disturbed the topsoil and destroyed the native grasses, which consist of a diverse species of grass. According to people involved in the work, the replacement grasses consisted of only one or two dominant species among the several that were common in the local ecosystem. And the seeds used for restoration came from beyond the local area, so residents are unsure whether the replanted grasses are exactly the same as the types that grow locally.

During winter, snow under the shade of solar panels takes a long time to melt, causing baby lambs to freeze in the cold. Dolma also told me, “The solar panels are making a fortune for the wild fox because it is hard to see them when they attack little lambs under the panels.”

Dolma told me that when the wind turbines were being built, their noise frightened her livestock and carried across the valley, disturbing neighbors during windy times.

The locals also told me that wind blowing through the posts and wires of solar farms produces persistent and unsettling noises that disturb both animals and people.

Future uncertainties

While these solar farms are generally considered “renewable” and part of “sustainable development,” their future remains uncertain. Locals told me they do not know whether the land-lease contracts will be renewed or abandoned when they expire in about 25 years. Solar panels also last around 25 years, and local people wonder how the waste will be disposed of.

As more Indigenous communities around the world become locations for climate mitigation projects, energy production and data centers, the stories of local people are essential to understand how their ways of life, culture and environment are affected by these new interventions.

Sanggay Tashi is a PhD candidate in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Anthropology specializing in cultural anthropology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How the development of solar and wind farms on the Tibetan Plateau is affecting local communities.

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Top photo: Livestock graze near solar panels in eastern Tibet (Photo: Sanggay Tashi)

Where did language come from?

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:02:23 +0000

Where did language come from? Rachel Sauer Mon, 07/27/2026 - 15:02

Karen Stollznow

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating

Humans are the only species known to use fully symbolic language: a system capable of expressing abstract ideas, imaginary worlds and endless combinations of meaning. But how did we get there?

The origins of language have fascinated philosophers, scientists and storytellers for thousands of years. Despite all our advances in linguistics, archaeology and cognitive science, we still don’t know exactly how language began.

That uncertainty hasn’t stopped people from trying to solve the mystery. In fact, some of the earliest theories of language’s origins are among the strangest and most entertaining ideas in the history of science.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Linguistics.

Bow wow, ding-dong

In the 19th century, scholars proposed a flurry of curious theories to explain how speech first emerged. Many of these theories were given playful nicknames by the German philologist Max Müller, who intended them partly as satire. Yet the theories were genuine attempts to tackle one of humanity’s biggest questions.

The most famous is probably the Bow-Wow Theory. This suggested language began through imitation of natural sounds. Early humans, according to this theory, copied the noises around them: animal cries, splashing water, thunderclaps and birdsong. Words such as “buzz”, “hiss”, “bang” and “splash” seem to support the idea because they sound like what they describe.

But there is a problem. Different languages hear the same sounds differently. English dogs go “woof” or “bow-wow”, but in Turkish they go “hev-hev”, while Indonesian dogs go “guk-guk”. Even animal noises, it turns out, are filtered through culture and language.

And onomatopoeic words (words that imitate sounds) make up only a tiny fraction of our vocabularies. Most words sound nothing like their meanings. For instance, there is nothing inherently tree-like about the word “tree”.

That brings us to the Ding-Dong Theory, which argued that sounds and meanings are naturally connected in some deeper, almost mystical way.

Some words do seem to fit their meanings uncannily well. “Mini”, “teeny” and “itsy-bitsy” feel small and delicate. “Lump”, “rump” and “plump” sound heavier and rounder.

Modern linguists call this sound symbolism. One famous experiment asked participants to match two nonsense words, “bouba” and “kiki”, to two shapes: one rounded and one jagged. Most people matched “bouba” with the soft shape and “kiki” with the sharp one.

The effect is real, but it is limited. Most language still appears to be arbitrary, which means there is no natural reason why a particular sound should mean a particular thing.

German philologist Max Müller gave playful nicknames to competing theories of language’s origins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Pooh-pooh, la-la, ye-he-ho

Other theories focused less on imitation and more on emotion and social interaction.

The Pooh-Pooh Theory proposed that speech began with instinctive emotional cries such as “ouch”, “oh” or perhaps less publishable exclamations uttered after stubbing a toe. According to this idea, language evolved from spontaneous vocal reactions to pain, surprise, fear or joy.

Again, though, there are complications. Interjections vary widely across languages. English speakers say “ouch”. Greeks say “aou”. Czechs might exclaim “ach”. Emotional sounds are not nearly as universal as they seem.

Then there is the wonderfully named Yo-He-Ho Theory, which suggested language emerged from rhythmic chants used during collective labour, like sailors chanting “yo-heave-ho” while hauling ropes, or workers singing together to coordinate physical effort.

The theory may sound quaint, but modern researchers do think rhythm, cooperation and social bonding played important roles in human evolution. Language is, after all, deeply social.

Another proposal, the La-La Theory, linked language to music. Charles Darwin entertained the possibility that speech evolved from musical calls used in courtship and emotional expression. Before humans spoke, perhaps we sang?

Some modern theories echo this idea. One hypothesis suggests that, as early humans began walking upright, parents increasingly needed to soothe babies from a distance. Sing-song vocalisations, cooing and proto “baby talk” may have helped strengthen emotional bonds and eventually paved the way for speech.

Gestures, symbols and brains

Today, most scientists think no single theory fully explains language origins. Instead, language probably emerged gradually through a combination of gestures, vocalisations, facial expressions, social cooperation and increasing cognitive complexity.

Charles Darwin speculated that speech evolved from musical expression. (Photo: Julia Margaret Cameron/Wikimedia Commons)

Some researchers argue that language began with gestures before shifting to speech. Others believe language evolved as a tool for social bonding, allowing larger groups of humans to cooperate and share information. Still others see language as tied to the evolution of symbolic thought itself: our ability to imagine, plan, remember and communicate abstract ideas.

Biology is also a factor. Humans have developed unusually precise control over the tongue, lips and vocal tract. We have evolved specialised brain regions linked to language processing.

But anatomy alone cannot explain language. Parrots can mimic speech sounds. Many animals communicate. None, however, appear to possess grammar and symbolism on the human scale. And, frustratingly, early language leaves no evidence behind. Spoken words don’t fossilise.

That lack of evidence is one reason the topic became so controversial that, in 1866, the Société de Linguistique de Paris banned discussions about language origins altogether, dismissing the field as hopelessly speculative.

Of course, theories about language origins also appear in religion and mythology. In Greek mythology, the messenger god Hermes was associated with language and communication. In the Hindu tradition, the goddess of knowledge and speech Saraswati bestowed Sanskrit upon humanity. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, language was a gift from God, who enabled Adam to name the animals in the Garden of Eden.

These stories reflect something deeply human: our urge to explain where language came from, because language itself feels almost magical. Every theory of language origins captures a small piece of the puzzle. Imitation, emotion, rhythm, music, gesture, cooperation and symbolic thought probably all played some role.

But none can provide a complete answer. The truth is that language evolved so long ago, and likely so gradually, that we will never pinpoint a single moment when it began, unless someone invents a time machine.

The birth of language will probably remain one of humanity’s greatest unsolved mysteries. Still, the theories themselves tell us something important. Humans are always trying to explain what makes us human. And language may be the most human thing of all.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Linguistics specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Nobody really knows, but the theories are fascinating.

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Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 21:19:22 +0000

Think all that plastic is being recycled? Think again Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/04/2026 - 15:19

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

Ellen Considine

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems

Picture a pile of trash the size of Manhattan and taller than one and a half Empire State Buildings. That’s how much plastic waste the world is predicted to be generating every year by 2050 if nothing is done to change course.

It’s easy to think of recycling as the solution, but the vast majority of plastic waste now ends up in landfills, or worse.

A large amount of plastic waste gets shipped overseas. In a new study, my colleague and I analyzed what happens when plastic waste is shipped to lower- and middle-income countries, where open burning is a common way of dealing with excess waste. The result, we found, is pronounced increases in toxic air pollution.

Ellen Considine is a Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder assistant professor of geography and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

Plastic waste burning and health impacts

Between 40% and 65% of total municipal solid waste is openly burned in low- and middle-income countries, largely as a result of 2 billion people around the world having no municipal solid waste collection.

Open burning occurs both intentionally and unintentionally, the latter when open dump sites containing organic waste spontaneously combust due to heat generated as the waste degrades.

When plastic burns, it releases particularly toxic air pollutants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into people’s bodies, along with gases that include carbon monoxide, styrene gas and hydrogen cyanide. It also releases persistent organic pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxins. These particles and gases have been linked to health risks ranging from respiratory and cardiovascular disease to cancer and reproductive and neurological disorders.

The ash from open burning can also contaminate soil and groundwater with persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other toxicants, creating more chances for people to be exposed to them through food and water.

The global plastic waste trade

Large amounts of plastic waste are shipped around the world – some to be recycled and much to simply be disposed of in landfills or incinerated. In 2024, 9.34 million metric tons of plastic waste imports were reported, according to the United Nations.

Where this exported plastic waste ends up has been shifting.

In 2018, China stopped importing plastic waste, causing the total amount of plastic waste moving among countries – at least through official channels – to drop dramatically. Between 1992 and 2016, China’s plastic waste imports made up 45% of global imports.

In 2018, the flow moved to other countries, largely in Southeast Asia but also other locations, including Turkey. In 2018, Indonesia became a net importer of plastic waste. The majority of this waste came from Western Europe, Australia and North America.

What happened to Indonesia’s air quality

We harnessed data from multiple monitoring systems, including satellite observations and cargo ship tracking signals, to understand where these plastic waste imports went and how much air pollution was released by openly burning this waste.

As of 2020, the World Economic Forum and Indonesia’s government estimated that 48% of Indonesia’s plastic waste is openly burned.

We found that particulate matter air pollution – of great concern for health – increased an average of 3.3% at the locations of large open waste dump sites in Indonesia after China’s ban in 2018-19 relative to expected business as usual, based on data from 2012-17. We found increases up to 1.68 micrograms per cubic meter.

Based on risk estimates from a global study of mortality associated with long-term exposure to outdoor fine particulate matter, this corresponds to an approximate 1.5%, 1.9% and 3.5% increase in mortality risk from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and lower respiratory infections, respectively.

New constraints on the plastic waste trade

In 2021, Indonesia restricted the import of nonhazardous waste to 15 specific ports and in 2025 banned the import of plastic waste altogether.

A man walking amid plastic waste on the Maldivian island of Thilafushi. (Photo: Dying Regime/Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-2025, Malaysia followed suit, allowing plastic waste only from countries that have ratified the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal – a treaty that the U.S. has never ratified.

For these bans to be effective, these countries must also find ways to contend with illegal plastic waste shipments and paper imports contaminated by plastic waste.

Meanwhile, negotiations for an international, legally binding treaty on plastic waste, started in 2022, have stalled. In mid-2024 the European Union did pass a new regulation on waste shipments, prohibiting exporting plastic waste to countries outside the group of wealthy countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development from November 2026 to at least May 2029.

The effectiveness of these and future policies at reducing air pollution – and other kinds of environmental degradation – can be evaluated using methods like ours.

Ways to reduce plastic waste

As of 2021, only 5% to 6% of U.S. domestic plastic waste was recycled, according to estimates from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics and Bennington College. It is now even harder to export plastic waste to other countries that could “recycle” it.

Part of the problem is lack of capacity: The Association of Plastic Recyclers estimates that current plastic reclamation facilities in the U.S. and Canada could at most increase their plastic recycling by 35% to 44%, depending on the type of plastic, leading to a total recycling rate of 7% to 9%.

Ultimately, both decreasing plastic use and increasing recycling will likely be needed to solve the problem. Beyond consumer choices, packaging reuse – creating packaging and return systems that put the same materials back to work – can reduce the need for new plastics.

Recycling experts call for harmonized design standards to help streamline processing and deliver higher-quality recycled plastics, as well as extended producer responsibility fees or taxes to raise the cost of producing products that aren’t recyclable. The fees can provide needed funding to scale up recycling and other programs to reduce generation of plastic waste.

Since 2021, seven states have enacted extended producer responsibility laws focused on packaging: Maine, Oregon, California, Ģ��Ӱ��, Minnesota, Washington and Maryland. However, it will take time to see the effects. Ģ��Ӱ��’s final implementation plan, authorized in 2022, was approved only in late 2025. The first payment of extended producer responsibility fees to the Ģ��Ӱ�� Department of Public Health and Environment are scheduled to begin in mid-2026.

Ultimately, reducing and better managing our nation’s plastic waste can help prevent global health harms.

Ellen Considine is an assistant professor in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Geography whose research lies at the intersection of environmental change, health and wellbeing and data science.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A lot of ‘recycled’ plastic is being burned overseas—and causing widespread pollution linked to health problems.

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Sramcbled wrods: the real reason you can still read jumbled text

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 22:19:38 +0000

Sramcbled wrods: the real reason you can still read jumbled text Rachel Sauer Thu, 04/30/2026 - 16:19

When we read, we typically don’t painstakingly process each letter in sequence. Instead, skilled readers recognize words rapidly by drawing on multiple cues at once. Psycholinguistic research shows that we process words as patterns rather than as sequences of individual sounds.

Karen Stollznow

"Typoglycemia" is often shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work, but this viral claim is only part of the story

You’ve probably seen it on social media before: a paragraph of scrambled text that looks like nonsense at first glance, yet somehow you can read it with surprising ease.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteers be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

This effect, often playfully referred to as "typoglycemia," is frequently shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Linguistics.

But this viral claim is only part of the story. To understand why it works, we need to look at how the brain actually processes written language.

There is no magical ‘rule’

The claim that usually accompanies this snippet is that as long as the first and last letters of a word are in the right place, the order of the middle letters doesn’t matter.

At first glance, the claim seems plausible.

But while there is a kernel of truth here, the explanation is misleading.

Reading scrambled words has much less to do with a magical “rule” about first and last letters, and much more to do with how our brains use context, pattern recognition and prediction.

We don’t read letter by letter

These include familiar letter patterns, the overall shape of the word and, crucially, the context of the sentence. Our brains are constantly predicting what is likely to come next, then checking those predictions against the visual input.

This is why we often miss typos in our own writing. We don’t see what’s actually on the page, we see what we expect to be there.

The same principle helps us make sense of jumbled words. Even when letters are out of order, enough of the structure remains for the brain to make an educated guess.

Word shape and structure matter

The viral meme suggests that only the first and last letters matter.

But this oversimplifies what’s really going on. We are sensitive to how letters relate to each other within a word. Common spelling patterns and familiar combinations make words easier to recognize, even when slightly distorted.

This is also why certain visual disruptions make reading harder. Text in alternating caps, such as “AlTeRnAtInG CaPs”, is difficult to process because it disrupts the usual visual contour of words. The same goes for “ransom note” lettering made from mismatched fonts, which interferes with pattern recognition.

In other words, readability depends on preserving enough of a word’s internal structure, not just its outer letters.

Not all scrambled text is readable

If the meme were true, any sentence with intact first and last letters should be easy to read. But that’s not what we find.

Take this example:

Salhal I cmorape tehe to a srmmeus day

It follows the supposed “rules”, yet it is much harder to decipher. In fact, this is the opening of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

So why is the viral paragraph so much easier to read? Because it has been carefully (if unconsciously) engineered to be readable.

The hidden tricks behind the meme

Several factors make the famous example easier to process than it appears.

First, many of the words are short, which limits how many possible combinations the letters could form. Words like “you” and “can” are often left unchanged.

Second, function words such as “the”, “and” and “is” are usually intact. These small, common words provide the grammatical scaffolding of the sentence, making it easier to predict what comes next.

Third, when longer words are scrambled, the changes are often minimal. Adjacent letters are swapped (“wrod” for “word”), which is much easier to process than more extreme rearrangements.

Finally, the passage itself is highly predictable. Once you recognize the topic and rhythm, your brain fills in the gaps automatically, much as it does when listening to speech in a noisy environment.

The key to understanding this phenomenon is context. Words are not processed in isolation. Each word is interpreted in relation to the others around it, and within a broader framework of meaning.

This allows us to compensate for missing or distorted information.

But there are limits. As scrambling becomes more extreme, or as words become less predictable, comprehension quickly breaks down. Reading speed also slows noticeably, even when we can still make sense of the text.

Humans and machines

Interestingly, computers can now unscramble jumbled words with remarkable accuracy. By analyzing probabilities and patterns across large datasets, algorithms can determine the most likely original form of a word or sentence.

In this sense, machines and humans rely on similar principles. Not rigid rules about letter position, but flexible systems that weigh patterns and probabilities. This highlights why the “typoglycemia” claim is an oversimplification, rather than a scientific rule.

The idea persists because it captures a genuine insight in a catchy way. It reveals that reading is not a simple, letter-by-letter process, but a dynamic interaction between perception and expectation.

At the same time, it’s a reminder of how easily scientific ideas can be distorted as they spread online.

So yes, we can often read scrambled words. But not because the order of letters doesn’t matter. It’s because our brains are remarkably good at making sense of imperfect information. So good, in fact, that they can turn a mess into meaning.

Karen Stollznow is a visiting scholar in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Linguistics specializing in the political and social history of modern Latin America.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

"Typoglycemia" is often shared online as a quirky insight into how our brains work, but this viral claim is only part of the story.

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Menstrual pads and tampons can contain toxic substances

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 20 Feb 2026 18:29:13 +0000

Menstrual pads and tampons can contain toxic substances Rachel Sauer Fri, 02/20/2026 - 11:29

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates tampons, menstrual cups and scented menstrual pads as Class II medical devices, which carry moderate to medium risk. (Photo: iStock)

Jenni Shearston

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder scholar highlights what to know about this emerging health issue

Ģ��Ӱ�� half of the global population menstruates at some point in their lives. Disposable products, such as tampons and pads, are some of the most popular products used around the globe to manage menstrual flow.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that many personal care products, including shampoo, lotion, nail polish and menstrual products, contain hazardous chemicals. Items used in or near the vagina are of particular concern because they are in contact with vaginal mucous membranes—the moist tissue lining the inside of the vagina that secretes mucus. These tissues can absorb some chemicals very efficiently.

People use menstrual products 24 hours a day for multiple days monthly, over the course of many years. Tampons, which are used internally, are surrounded by the permeable vaginal mucous membrane for up to eight hours at a time.

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder scientist Jenni Shearston is principal investigator in the Chemicals, Environment, Equity, Public Health, and Periods (CEEP.) Lab.

I am an environmental epidemiologist, and I study chemical exposure, its sources and its health effects. As a person who menstruates, I also must make my own decisions around menstrual products and manage the challenge of finding accurate information about women’s health risks, which receive less research attention and funding than men’s health.

In 2024, I co-authored the first paper that detected metals in tampons, including toxic metals like lead and arsenic. My colleagues and I also wrote a review paper that surveyed the scientific literature and found about two dozen studies measuring chemicals in menstrual products.

The various chemicals that these studies detected were typically at concentrations low enough to make their health impact unclear. However, they included chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system, which makes and controls hormones that are essential for bodies to function.

How contaminants get into menstrual products

The first modern tampon in the U.S. was patented in 1931. Nearly a century later, tampons still are made primarily from cotton, rayon or a blend of the two.

Chemicals may get into tampons and other menstrual products in a number of ways. Some chemicals, like heavy metals, are present in soil, either naturally or due to pollution, and may be absorbed by cotton plants.

Other chemicals, such as zinc, may be intentionally added to menstrual products to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria. Still others, such as phthalates—synthetic chemicals used to manufacture plastics—may leach into menstrual products from plastic packaging or be added as part of a fragrance.

Research suggests that these chemicals are present in a large proportion of menstrual products – we found lead present in all 30 tampons we tested. What we don’t yet know is if these chemicals can get into people’s bodies in a high enough concentration to cause health effects in either the reproductive system or elsewhere in the body.

Limited federal regulations

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates tampons, menstrual cups and scented menstrual pads as Class II medical devices, which carry moderate to medium risk. Unscented menstrual pads are Class I medical devices, which are considered low-risk. These categories are based on the risk the device may present to a consumer who uses it in the intended way.

FDA guidance for Class II devices offers only a few general guidelines with respect to chemicals. For menstrual tampons and pads, it recommends—but does not require—that products should not contain two specific dioxin products or “any pesticide and herbicide residues.” Dioxins are a chemical by-product of the bleaching process to whiten cotton, and they are associated with cancer and endocrine disruption. Using non-chlorine bleaching methods can reduce dioxin formation.

The most stringent regulation of tampons in the U.S. occurred after an illness called toxic shock syndrome became a public concern in the 1970s and 1980s. Menstrual toxic shock syndrome occurs when the bacteria Staphlococcus aureus grows in the vagina on inserted menstrual products and releases a toxin called TSST-1. This substance can be absorbed through the vaginal mucosa and cause a variety of symptoms, including fever, high blood pressure, shock and even death.

During this epidemic, in which at least 52 cases were recorded and seven people died over a period of eight months, tampons were associated with the syndrome—especially a highly absorbent tampon called Rely, which was pulled from the market.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates tampons, menstrual cups and scented menstrual pads as Class II medical devices, which carry moderate to medium risk. (Photo: iStock)

In response, the FDA created a task force that recommended standardizing the tampon absorbencies and advised consumers to use the lowest absorbency for their flow. This is why tampons in the U.S. now come in a range of absorbencies, from light through regular to super and ultra, so that users can choose the level they need while minimizing risk of toxic shock.

Living in a ‘soup of chemicals’

Just because a chemical is present in a menstrual product doesn’t mean it can get into the body. However, chemicals like lead and arsenic are known threats to human health. So it’s important to study whether harmful chemicals present in menstrual products could contribute to health problems.

Humans in the modern world live in what expert toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, calls a “soup of chemicals.” Simply being present on Earth means being exposed to many chemicals, at different concentrations, all at once. This makes it difficult to unravel the relationship between a single chemical exposure and health.

Nonetheless, science has shown that chemical exposure from at least one menstrual product—vaginal douches—does affect health. Vaginal douching is the process of washing or cleaning the inside of the vagina with water or other fluids.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends avoiding this process, which can harm healthy bacteria in the vagina, increasing the risk of vaginal infections and other diseases.

In addition, a 2015 study found that women who use vaginal douches have higher concentrations of a chemical called monoethyl phthalate in their urine. Exposure to this substance is associated with reproductive health problems, such as reduced fertility and increased pregnancy risk.

Can these chemicals be absorbed?

Scientists are working now to determine what concentrations of metals and other chemicals can leach out of tampons and other menstrual products. One 2025 study estimated that volatile organic compounds, a group of chemicals that vaporize quickly, can be absorbed through the vaginal mucosa. Volatile organic compounds may be added to menstrual products as part of fragrances, adhesives or other product components.

My team and I are now shifting our focus to the relationship between menstrual product use, various chemicals, and menstrual pain and bleeding severity. We want to see whether some chemicals will be elevated in menstrual blood, whether these chemical levels are higher in people who use tampons, and whether the chemicals are associated with greater menstrual pain and bleeding.

States are starting to act on this issue. For example, in 2024, Vermont became the first U.S. state to ban multiple chemicals from disposable menstrual products. California bans PFAS, a widely used group of highly persistent chemicals, from menstrual products. New York adopted a law in December 2025 barring multiple toxic chemicals from menstrual products.

California also enacted a law in October 2025 that requires manufacturers of disposable tampons and pads to measure concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, lead and zinc in their products, and to share those measurements with the state, which can publish them. More information like this will help support informed choices for millions of consumers who rely on menstrual products every month.

Jenni Shearston is an assistant professor in the Department of Integrative Physiology.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder scholar highlights what to know about this emerging health issue.

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Honoring the legacy of Vincent Chin

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 05 Sep 2025 16:25:57 +0000

Honoring the legacy of Vincent Chin Rachel Sauer Fri, 09/05/2025 - 10:25

Jennifer Ho

A Detroit street is named in honor of Vincent Chin—his death mobilized Asian American activists nationwide

The legacy of Vincent Chin has recently been commemorated in a street sign bearing his name on the corner of Cass Avenue and Peterboro Street in Detroit’s historic Chinatown.

I was glad to see it. Watching the 1987 documentary “Who Killed Vincent Chin?” and learning about his life and Asian American activism changed my life.

I was 18 and taking my first Asian American studies class at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The film made me realize two things: Asian Americans are targets of racial violence, and Asian Americans across the ethnic spectrum could join together to fight for civil rights. This led to my passion for social justice.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Department of Ethnic Studies and director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

I’m proud to now be a professor of Asian American studies and critical race theory who teaches my students about Vincent Chin.

So who was Chin, and why did his death catalyze an Asian American civil rights movement?

A fatal brawl

Chin, an Oak Park resident, was 27 years old on the night of his bachelor party, June 19, 1982. He got into a fight with two white men – Ronald Ebens, a Chrysler car plant supervisor, and Michael Nitz, an unemployed autoworker and Ebens’ stepson.

According to Racine Colwell, a dancer at the Fancy Pants Club in the Detroit area, Ebens shouted, “It’s because of you little motherf–kers that we’re out of work.” Detroit in the early 1980s was in an automotive slump. People blamed Japanese auto imports and the Japanese people, in general, for the economic downturn. The assailants didn’t seem to understand or care that Chin was actually Chinese.

After the fight between Chin and Nitz and Ebens, Chin and his friends ran out of the club. Ebens and Nitz ran after them, with Nitz grabbing a baseball bat from his car. When they found Chin outside a McDonald’s on Woodward Avenue, Nitz held Chin while Ebens beat his body and head with the bat. They were stopped by two off-duty police officers who had been inside the fast-food restaurant.

After the attack, Jimmy Choi, a member of the bachelor party, cradled Chin in his arms. He said that Chin’s last words were “It’s not fair.” Chin died four days later.

Ebens and Nitz were charged with second-degree murder, but their lawyers pleaded the charge down to manslaughter. At the end of the trial, Judge Charles Kaufman fined them US$3,000 each and sentenced each to three years’ probation, explaining: “These weren’t the kind of people you send to prison. … You don’t make the punishment fit the crime. You make the punishment fit the criminal.”

Vincent Chin was a Chinese American draftsman who died as the result of an anti-Asian hate crime on June 19, 1982. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Asian Americans organize for legal justice

The sentencing enraged Chin’s friends, family and the greater Chinese and Asian American community of Detroit.

Activists of various Asian ethnicities and their non-Asian allies created American Citizens for Justice, an organization that pressured the Justice Department to investigate the violation of Chin’s civil rights and to see Ebens and Nitz imprisoned for Chin’s murder. Lily Chin, Vincent’s mother, was a key advocate in the pursuit of justice for her son, showing up to rallies and interviews to remind people of Vincent’s death for nearly a decade.

While there were other moments, such as the anti-eviction fight for the I-Hotel in San Francisco, that brought Asian Americans of all ethnicities together to fight for civil rights, Chin’s murder sparked a broad awareness. Asian Americans realized that what happened to Chin could happen to them.

American Citizens for Justice held press conferences and gained support from local African American activists in Michigan and national Black leaders like Jesse Jackson, whose presence helped bring more attention to the Chin tragedy.

Activists were successful in forcing the FBI to open an investigation. The resulting 1984 federal trial was the first time the Justice Department had argued that the civil rights of an Asian American person had been violated. Nitz was found not guilty on two counts. Ebens was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, a 1986 federal appeals court ruling overturned the conviction, freeing Ebens.

A civil suit filed against Ebens and Nitz on behalf of Lily Chin was settled out of court in 1987. Nitz agreed to pay $50,000 and Ebens $1.5 million – the projected income that Chin would have made had he lived.

Nitz fulfilled his debt, but Ebens made only a few payments. By 1987, Ebens had been unemployed for five years. He stopped making payments after he moved to Nevada. Estimates in 2016 place Ebens’ debt to the Chin estate at over $8 million, including accumulated interest.

Chin’s death had a profound impact on the criminal justice system in Michigan and nationally. Michigan made it harder to plead down murder charges to manslaughter and required prosecutors to be present at sentencings to face victims. Nationally, victim impact statements are now commonplace. Victims and their families now have more of a voice in the justice system.

Chin’s death spurred Pan-Asian American activism across the U.S., leading to the eventual founding of organizations like Asian Americans Advancing Justice in 1991 and Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Stop AAPI Hate recorded violence against Asians happening in the U.S. and educated people about anti-Asian racism.

Today, Asian Americans fight for social justice through organizations like these and 18 Million Rising, a group that advocates for racial justice for Asian Americans and all marginalized people.

This is the lasting legacy of Vincent Chin.

Jennifer Ho is a professor of Asian American studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Detroit street is named in honor of Vincent Chin—his death mobilized Asian American activists nationwide.

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Top image: Valaurian Waller/The Conversation

Is drought the new normal?

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 17:56:36 +0000

Is drought the new normal? Rachel Sauer Thu, 08/14/2025 - 11:56

Pedro DiNezio and Timothy Shanahan

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought

A new wave of climate research is sounding a stark warning: Human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The southwestern United States has been in a historic megadrought for much of the past two decades, with its reservoirs including lakes Mead and Powell dipping to record lows and legal disputes erupting over rights to use water from the Ģ��Ӱ�� River.

This drought has been linked to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a climate pattern that swings between wet and dry phases every few decades. Since a phase change in the early 2000s, the region has endured a dry spell of epic proportions.

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder scientist Pedro DiNezio, along with climate researchers around the world, assert that human activity may be driving drought more intensely—and more directly—than previously understood.

The PDO was thought to be a natural phenomenon, governed by unpredictable natural ocean and atmosphere fluctuations. But new research published in the journal Nature suggests that’s no longer the case.

Working with hundreds of climate model simulations, our team of atmosphere, earth and ocean scientists found that the PDO is now being strongly influenced by human factors and has been since the 1950s. It should have oscillated to a wetter phase by now, but instead it has been stuck. Our results suggest that drought could become the new normal for the region unless human-driven warming is halted.

The science of a drying world

For decades, scientists have relied on a basic physical principle to predict rainfall trends: Warmer air holds more moisture. In a warming world, this means wet areas are likely to get wetter, while dry regions become drier. In dry areas, as temperatures rise, more moisture is pulled from soils and transported away from these arid regions, intensifying droughts.

While most climate models simulate this general pattern, they often underestimate its full extent, particularly over land areas.

Yet countries are already experiencing drought emerging as one of the most immediate and severe consequences of climate change. Understanding what’s ahead is essential, to know how long these droughts will last and because severe droughts can have sweeping affects on ecosystems, economies and global food security.

Human fingerprints on megadroughts

Simulating rainfall is one of the greatest challenges in climate science. It depends on a complex interplay between large-scale wind patterns and small-scale processes such as cloud formation.

Until recently, climate models have not offered a clear picture of how rainfall patterns are likely to change in the near future as greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, power plants and industries continue to heat up the planet. The models can diverge sharply in where, when and how precipitation will change. Even forecasts that average the results of several models differ when it comes to changes in rainfall patterns.

The techniques we deployed are helping to sharpen that picture for North America and across the tropics.

We looked back at the pattern of PDO phase changes over the past century using an exceptionally large ensemble of climate simulations. The massive number of simulations, more than 500, allowed us to isolate the human influences. This showed that the shifts in the PDO were driven by an interplay of increasing warming from greenhouse gas emissions and cooling from sun-blocking particles called aerosols that are associated with industrial pollution.

From the 1950s through the 1980s, we found that increasing aerosol emissions from rapid industrialization following World War II drove a positive trend in the PDO, making the Southwest rainier and less parched.

After the 1980s, we found that the combination of a sharp rise in greenhouse gas emissions from industries, power plants and vehicles and a reduction in aerosols as countries cleaned up their air pollution shifted the PDO into the negative, drought-generating trend that continues today.

This finding represents a paradigm shift in our scientific understanding of the PDO and a warning for the future. The current negative phase can no longer be seen as just a roll of the climate dice—it has been loaded by humans.

Our conclusion that global warming can drive the PDO into its negative, drought-inducing phase is also supported by geological records of past megadroughts. Around 6,000 years ago, during a period of high temperatures, evidence shows the emergence of a similar temperature pattern in the North Pacific and widespread drought across the Southwest.

Tropical drought risks underestimated

The past is also providing clues to future rainfall changes in the tropics and the risk of droughts in locations such as the Amazon.

One particularly instructive example comes from approximately 17,000 years ago. Geological evidence shows that there was a period of widespread rainfall shifts across the tropics coinciding with a major slowdown of ocean currents in the Atlantic.

These ocean currents, which play a crucial role in regulating global climate, naturally weakened or partially collapsed then, and they are expected to slow further this century at the current pace of global warming.

A recent study of that period, using computer models to analyze geologic evidence of earth’s climate history, found much stronger drying in the Amazon basin than previously understood. It also shows similar patterns of aridification in Central America, West Africa and Indonesia.

The results suggest that rainfall could decline precipitously again. Even a modest slowdown of a major Atlantic Ocean current could dry out rainforests, threaten vulnerable ecosystems and upend livelihoods across the tropics.

What comes next

Drought is a growing problem, increasingly driven by human influence. Confronting it will require rethinking water management, agricultural policy and adaptation strategies. Doing that well depends on predicting drought with far greater confidence.

Climate research shows that better predictions are possible by using computer models in new ways and rigorously validating their performance against evidence from past climate shifts. The picture that emerges is sobering, revealing a much higher risk of drought across the world.

Pedro DiNezio is an associate professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder. Timothy Shanahan is an associate professor of geological science at the University of Texas at Austin

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Climate models reveal how human activity may be locking the Southwest into permanent drought.

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Moose are on the loose

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 22:43:40 +0000

Moose are on the loose Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 16:43

William Taylor , John Wendt and Joshua Miller

Moose have lived in Ģ��Ӱ�� for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions

Moose are on the loose in the southern Rockies.

In July 2025, a young wandering bull was captured roaming a city park in Greeley, Ģ��Ӱ��. A spate of similar urban sightings alongside some aggressive moose encounters has elevated moose management and conservation into a matter of public debate, especially across metro Denver and the Ģ��Ӱ�� Front Range.

In Rocky Mountain National Park, a recent study found that moose and elk might be to blame for far-reaching changes to valley ecosystems, as their browsing reduces important plants like willows, depriving beavers of habitat and materials for their wetland engineering. Park wildlife are generally not managed through hunting, but the park has tried techniques like fencing moose away from wetland zones. Publicly, discussion has swirled around further mitigation measures to slow or eliminate moose populations.

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder archaeologist William Taylor is partnering with paleoecology and conservation paleobiology colleagues to study the ancient animals of the Rockies.

At the heart of this debate is a basic question – do moose belong in the southern Rockies at all?

During much of the last century, moose were apparently rare in Ģ��Ӱ��. The animals are absent from some early 20th century official wildlife tallies. Then, in 1978, the Ģ��Ӱ�� Division of Wildlife – now Ģ��Ӱ�� Parks and Wildlife – released a group of moose into North Park in north-central Ģ��Ӱ��. At the time, biologists understood their efforts to be a reintroduction, but in the years since, wildlife managers have shifted their thinking about the place of moose in local ecosystems.

In the decades that followed, the moose expanded their range and numbers. Today, informal estimates by Ģ��Ӱ�� Parks and Wildlife put the moose population at around 3,500 animals. Under increased moose browsing pressure and a shifting climate, some mountain wetland environments are changing.

Should these changes be thought of as human-made ecological wounds caused by releasing moose? The National Park Service seems to think so.

Statements from 2025 on the park service website, and other public messaging from wildlife officials, assert that Ģ��Ӱ�� has never supported a breeding population of moose – only the occasional transient visitor. The factual basis for this idea seems to hinge heavily on an unpublished internal report from 2015, which identified only a few archaeological or historical records of moose near the park.

We are a team of archaeologists, paleoecologists and conservation paleobiologists studying the ancient animals of the Rockies.

Understanding moose and their interactions with people centuries ago means carefully analyzing different traces that survive the passage of time. These can range from the bones of animals themselves to indirect clues preserved in everything from lake sediments to historical records.

Are moose actually native to Ģ��Ӱ��?

As scientists studying the past, we know that reconstructing the ancient geographic ranges of animals is difficult. Archaeological sites with animal bones can be a great tool to understand the past, especially for tracing the food choices of ancient humans. But such sites can be rare, and even when they are well preserved and well studied, it can take lots of care and scientific research to identify the species of each bone.

Harder still is determining the intimate details of ancient animals’ lives, including how and where they lived, died or reproduced. Such key details can be especially opaque for moose, who are solitary and elusive. Because of this, moose may not end up in human diets, even where both species have established populations. A comprehensive review of archaeological sites from across Alaska and some areas of the Canadian Yukon, where moose are common today and have likely been present since the end of the last Ice Age, found that moose were nearly absent until the past few centuries. In fact, moose often comprised less than 0.1% of the total number of bones in very large collections, if they appeared at all. In some areas, cultural reasons like taboos against moose hunting can also prevent them from ending up in archaeological bone tallies.

In new research published as a preprint in advance of peer review, we took a closer look at the idea that moose were absent from Ģ��Ӱ�� before 1978. We combed through newspaper records, photo archives and early travel diaries and identified dozens of references to moose sightings in Ģ��Ӱ�� spanning the first records in 1860 through the decade of moose reintroduction in the 1970s.

Moose sightings appear in the very earliest written records of the area that would become Rocky Mountain National Park. In his 1863 diary, Milton Estes described happening upon a large moose alongside a band of elk while on a hunting trip.

“Since elk were common I picked out Mr. Moose for my game,” he wrote.

Milton thought he had bagged “the first and only moose that had ever been killed so far south.” He was wrong.

Our archival research turned up even earlier sightings of moose in the area, along with many more across the region in the decades that followed. Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bulls, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Ģ��Ӱ�� before reintroduction.

These sightings recorded in diaries and newspapers don’t have to stand on their own. Moose appear in older placenames around the state, like the area once known as Moose Park along the road from Lyons to Estes Park. Written accounts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries among Ute, Shoshone and Arapaho peoples describe moose stories, hunts and songs. And though historical records don’t go too much further back than the mid-19th century in Ģ��Ӱ��, archaeological records do.

Our survey of Ģ��Ӱ�� sites turned up ancient moose at Jurgens, near Greeley, dated to more than 9,000 years ago, and even moose bone tools among the ruins of Mesa Verde, only a few centuries ago.

Diaries, newspapers and photo records from the past two centuries show the presence of not only young bull moose, which at times can range widely, but also cows and calves, a sign that local breeding was taking place in Ģ��Ӱ�� before reintroduction.

This question of whether moose are native to the southern Rockies is not just a philosophical one – its answer will shape management decisions by the National Park Service and others.

Official narrative minimizes moose presence

The contemporary idea of moose as non-native animals reflects a different understanding than was common only a few decades ago. In the 1940s, some biologists described moose as a native species that had been “extirpated except for stragglers.” As recently as the early 1970s, Rocky Mountain National Park officials understood their moose work as a reintroduction of “wild animals once native to the park.” Our findings suggest that the valid knowledge of earlier scientists has since faded or been replaced, repositioning moose as ecological outsiders.

As moose-human conflicts and shifting wetland ecologies prompt hard conversations over how to manage moose, a range of options have been discussed in public discourse. These include courses of action such as the reintroduction of carnivores like wolves, or targeted hunting access for tribes or the public.

If moose are ‘invasive,’ they can be removed

For federal agencies, labels like “invasive” or “non-native” carry legal connotations and can be used to enable other measures, like eradication.

In Olympic National Park, where mountain goats were deemed invasive and ecologically impactful, biologists undertook an extermination campaign that involved shooting the animals from helicopters, despite warnings from archaeologists as long ago as the late 1990s that the data behind their argument was flawed.

As the animal and plant communities of our Rockies change rapidly in a warming world, this kind of policy would not only be unsupported by scientific evidence, but also likely to impede the ability of our animal communities to survive, adapt and thrive.

The historical evidence indicates that moose are not foreign intruders. Archival, archaeological and anthropological data shows that moose have been in the southern Rockies for centuries, if not millennia. Rather than treat moose as a threat, we urge Rocky Mountain National Park and other agencies to work in partnership with tribes, paleoecologists and the public to carefully develop historically grounded management plans for this Ģ��Ӱ�� native.

William Taylor is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder. John Wendt is a postdoctoral fellow in natural resources ecology and management at Oklahoma State University. Joshua Miller is an associate professor of geosciences at the University of Cincinnati.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Moose have lived in Ģ��Ӱ�� for centuries—unpacking evidence from history, archaeology, oral traditions.

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Telling the stories of loss and healing

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:52:08 +0000

Telling the stories of loss and healing Rachel Sauer Wed, 08/13/2025 - 15:52

After the Marshall Fire, area residents created notes of support for friends and neighbors at the Louisville Public Library; the notes were displayed in the library windows. (Photo: Louisville Historical Museum)

Kathryn E. Goldfarb and Lucas Rozell

Ģ��Ӱ��’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project

The Ģ��Ӱ�� Marshall Fire killed two people and destroyed over 1,000 structures on Dec. 30, 2021.

The news cycle has long since moved on, but people impacted by the fire are still recovering. Part of that process is through storytelling.

The Louisville Historical Museum, which is located 10 miles east of Boulder, later joined by collaborators from the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder Anthropology Department, initiated the Marshall Fire Story Project to preserve the stories of people affected.

Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder researcher Kathryn Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology.

“This is the first time we’ve actually sat down and taken this long to talk about it,” said Lisa Clark, one contributor to the project. “’Cause we’re always like, ‘(people) have better things to do. You don’t wanna hear our pain. You don’t wanna hear our stories,’ you know. But yeah, it’s been nice to do it.”

All project contributors are quoted using their real names.

We are a cultural anthropologist and qualitative researcher who are collaborating with the Louisville Historical Museum on the Marshall Fire Story Project. Broadly, we are each involved with research that explores the importance of personal and community narratives for well-being.

However, the Marshall Fire Story Project is not a research project. We have no research questions. Contributors are simply invited to share what they would like about the fire.

While this project embraces the specificity of individual experiences, recent destructive fires in Maui, Hawaii, and Southern California show that the work we are doing is needed in many other locations.

Why oral history?

Recounting personal experiences is critical to the historical record.

Oral history has also become recognized as a powerful method for healing after trauma, both for individuals and larger community groups. Talking about traumatic events may be painful. However, narrative also facilitates meaning-making, strengthens ties within communities, and contributes to social justice efforts.

By telling their own stories in their own words, participants in the Marshall Fire Story Project shape what is remembered and how it is remembered.

Contributors to the project had diverse objectives in sharing their stories. Many welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the historical record, which Jessica Rossi-Katz described as “a record of experience.” Another contributor wanted to share their perspective as a lower-income person. Others mentioned the relevance of local stories as they apply to a global context of climate change.

As wildfires become ever more common, the themes that came up in the oral histories are increasingly relevant to community members, policymakers and scholars alike.

Stories of loss

Two people lost their lives in the fire, along with over 1,000 pets.

“I’d take losing my stuff over losing them,” said Anna Kramer, when describing the loss of her neighbor’s dogs. Kramer, an artist, did lose her stuff, including the majority of her artistic works.

Remediation workers clean the garage of Gigi Yang, a collaborator for the Marshall Fire Story Project. Due to concerns about toxins from smoke and ash residue in their homes, many residents opted for smoke remediation and deep cleaning of their homes. (Photo: Gigi Yang)

Abby McClelland’s family was away from their house when it burned.

“For a while I was really upset that we weren’t there and didn’t get a chance to take anything,” McClelland said. “And the more I think about what we would’ve taken, the more I’m like, that stuff is dumb.”

The family was able to replace their vital records and passports within weeks.

“But things like, you know, my grandmother’s rings or the Champagne cork from our wedding reception. Like things that I would’ve thought, oh, that’s so silly to evacuate that, those are the truly irreplaceable things.”

Mary Barry said the “fire was the ultimate downsizer.” She reflected on the objects she had lost – her daughter’s baby pictures, her sewing machines, a collection of books bound in blue and gold.

The fire also took Barry’s pet turtles, one of whom her husband had kept for over twenty years.

“Losing (a) house is like losing a person, where you mourn the loss of your comfort,” Barry said. This was particularly true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, where people’s homes were their entire environment during quarantine.

Many of those whose homes did not burn suffered a different kind of ambiguous loss. Their homes were damaged by smoke, which carried with it heavy metals, hazardous chemicals and volatile organic compounds.

Shana Sutton’s family stayed in a hotel for six months while their home was being remediated. Like many others, much of the family’s belongings were deemed nonsalvageable.

“In my head,” Sutton recounted, “I was like, okay, I’m just going to pretend that they all burned.”

Concern with health impacts

As she watched the smoke from a distance, Brittany Petrelli told her brother on the phone, “I can smell how devastating this fire is.” Petrelli, a project contributor involved with the recovery effort, recounted that the fire smelled “like things that shouldn’t be burning. Rubber, plastic building materials.”

Residents with concerns about outdoor and indoor air quality as well as soil and water contamination contacted scientists at the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder, who, along with scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory, conducted air quality sampling. Ultimately, the publicized data for outdoor air quality showed little difference from other urban areas.

Residents whose homes survived but were affected by smoke continued to note symptoms such as sore throats, coughs and stinging eyes for six months and then one year after the fire.

Like others whose homes were damaged by smoke, Beth Eldridge had difficulty obtaining insurance coverage for mitigation. After she attempted to clean char and ash on her own, she experienced persistent health impacts.

“Being part of an HOA (Home Owner’s Association) should give you two buckets of insurance,” Eldridge explained, “but in reality, everyone is divided and the system makes individuals fend for themselves. My insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. The HOA insurance wouldn’t take any responsibility. … I was sick and I couldn’t get better and I needed help.”

Accounts from the project highlight uncertainty that remediated personal items were “really clean” – as Shana Sutton shared, it “makes you crazy.” Many people spoke of dissatisfaction with a lack of standards for remediation. Current standards, not specific to wildfires, do not engage the epidemiological and toxicological effects of fire byproducts, although experts in the field recognize these dangers.

Precarity and community solidarity

Being underinsured was a persistent theme in project stories, and some people recounted how negotiating with their insurance companies literally became a full-time job. After the fire, lower-income community members found themselves in an even more acute state of financial uncertainty.

A number of mutual aid groups sprung up in the aftermath of the fire, and several of those groups shared their stories with the project. Meryl Suissa started the Marshall Fire Community group on Facebook, which worked to help families replace items lost in the fire.

“I think what we’ve learned is like, yes, people are okay and they’re strong and they’re resilient and they’re gonna continue fighting,” Suissa said. “But we still have a long way to go to help them heal.”

Kate Coslett, who ran Operation Hotel Sanity, also highlighted how the community came together to contribute to organizations like hers, which delivered home-cooked meals to displaced residents.

“So many volunteers, hundreds of volunteers,” she said. “It’s September (2022), and there are still people making meals. It’s incredible … their empathy and their love, this community is just, I have goose bumps.”

Yet recovery means different things to different people. As Abby McClelland noted, there is a difference between “trauma on the individual level and trauma on the collective level.”

“I can rebuild the house,” McClelland said, “but I can’t rebuild all the houses in the neighborhood, and I can’t plant all the trees, and I can’t, you know, reopen all the businesses. I can’t reverse the trauma in the area. I can only control what’s inside my house. It’s hard to know what’s going to happen on that larger level, and how long that’s going to resonate.”

Like others who shared their accounts with the project, McClelland highlighted a necessity for policy change and governmental actions to prevent further climate-related disasters.

“Individuals can’t solve systemic problems,” she said.

Future of the project

For a community historical museum whose motto is “Be a part of the story,” first-person records constitute valuable resources for both the present and the future.

Our team is currently preparing written and oral project contributor submissions for archiving in a publicly accessible platform. In partnership with Marshall Together and the Community Foundation Boulder County, we are documenting recovery and rebuilding experiences as residents return to their homes.

The first storytellers in our project spoke of trauma and despair, but also gratitude for community. What will future stories tell us as neighbors continue to reunite and adjust to how the community has changed after the Marshall Fire?

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Imperioli, museum associate – Public History & Oral History, and Gigi Yang, museum services supervisor of the Louisville Historical Museum.

Kathryn E. Goldfarb is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Ģ��Ӱ�� Boulder. Lucas Rozell (MAnth'24) is a research assistant on the Ģ��Ӱ�� Anschutz Medical Campus.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ģ��Ӱ��’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.

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Top photo courtesy the Louisville Historical Museum

The Conversation

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