{"id":210901,"date":"2026-07-17T12:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/210901\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:13:08","slug":"iraq-and-chevron-are-planning-a-route-through-syria-to-evade-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/210901\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq and Chevron Are Planning a Route Through Syria to Evade Strait of Hormuz"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of the day, everyone should make decisions based on their own risk tolerance. But John C. Quindry \u2014 a professor of integrative physiology and athletic training at the University of Montana, who described his team as \u201cfirst to the party\u201d when it comes to understanding the risks of exercising in the smoke \u2014 said his research shows that not only is exercising in the smoke hazardous to otherwise healthy individuals<\/a>, there\u2019s also a class of people for whom it might be extra dangerous, and they might not even know it. <\/p>\n

Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Why is exercising in the smoke worse than, say, commuting in the smoke? <\/p>\n

If you exercise, you take more breaths per minute, and you take deeper breaths, so the total volume of air you breathe at a given time is greater. <\/p>\n

Inhaling wildfire smoke is sometimes compared to smoking cigarettes. Some back-of-the-envelope math puts a run in Chicago this morning<\/a> at the equivalent of smoking a couple of cigarettes, which sounds pretty minimal. Why take this seriously?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t know for sure that when you exercise outside, it\u2019s equivalent to, in this case, smoking a couple of cigarettes or a pack. We\u2019ve been working for years trying to actually figure out how bad it is, and we just don\u2019t know. <\/p>\n

One of the things that complicates this is that not all smoke is created equal. Wildfire smoke in the West is different from wildfire smoke east of the Mississippi, where there are many different types of vegetation. And separately, if a wildfire consumes a house and all the plastics, organic solvents, and things in the roof, that\u2019s certainly worse than just biomass burning \u2014 and that is all separate from cigarette smoke. So the chemicals that you inhale are part of it; it\u2019s not just the particulate. <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think it\u2019s inappropriate to say we know how much particulate a filtered cigarette is going to deliver on a puff-by-puff basis and try to equate it to inhaling wood smoke or being downwind of a fire event. Those back-of-the-envelope calculations can make it one-to-one. But what is the impact on health? We don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Going back to something you said, is smoke in the West or East worse? Why?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t really know, and one reason is that smoke that starts in the West goes east. There are some really good studies that look at the rates of emergency room visits and deaths downwind of fires. You can apply some pretty fancy math<\/a>, and it\u2019s clearly demonstrated by multiple research groups that whatever the source of the smoke is, there are people who are extra sensitive to it, and they show up in the emergency room more frequently. Tragically, to a smaller degree, they also occasionally die more frequently. <\/p>\n

But if we put those data aside and say, \u201cWhat does the smoke look like from Western biomass versus Eastern biomass?\u201d We know the Western biomass, at least this time of year, is much drier. And when it\u2019s dry, it tends to burn a little \u201ccleaner,\u201d which is to say, if you were to take a certain number of grams of pine wood \u2014 which burns fairly cleanly \u2014 how much PM 2.5 do you get? You\u2019re going to get a higher PM 2.5 from wet wood. That\u2019s the effect when you start to move to the middle or eastern part of the country. Deciduous trees, even when they\u2019re dry, put out more PM 2.5 unit by unit. <\/p>\n

Now, is that worse for the body in the short or long term? We really don\u2019t know. Once you breathe in the smoke, it\u2019s pretty easy to measure what\u2019s in the blood: You just take a blood sample before and after the exposure. You can try to gauge how bad the smoke is by looking at what appears in the blood. Do you get oxidative stress? Do you get inflammation? Is there something else there? Has it changed metabolism? <\/p>\n

We also look at exhaled breath condensate. It\u2019s the immune cells, which are the first line of defense when you\u2019re exposed to particulates, that are really sounding the alarm. In some people, that alarm gets sounded more than in others. So we\u2019ve been trying to figure out what are these subtle but important biochemical and physiologic signals? How do they go together? They tell us how bad the smoke is, but it\u2019s taken us years to unfold this story.<\/p>\n

I saw in your 2025 study<\/a> that half of your participants had a heightened response to physiological stress, and that you selected them for that reason. I was hoping you could tell me what a \u201cheightened response to physiological stress\u201d means and why it was important to include those candidates.<\/p>\n

This is critical. Let me give you the backstory. When we would do these studies, we would put participants in the lab and burn Western locally sourced pine dried out to 15% humidity. We\u2019d burn it carefully, measure the dose of PM 2.5, and have people breathe it in. We\u2019d conduct studies before and after exercise, whether on a bike or a treadmill, and we varied the intensity and duration. And we didn\u2019t find very much when we looked at the blood and exhaled breath condensate for how well the blood vessels constrict or how reactive the body\u2019s autonomic nervous system was in controlling cardiovascular function. We\u2019d find subtle changes, but statistically speaking, we could never really draw firm conclusions.<\/p>\n

But we would notice that, on a person-by-person basis, there would be notable spikes in what we were looking at. We\u2019d see, \u201cOh, these three or four people really seem to have this notable response, and everybody else really didn\u2019t.\u201d We\u2019d publish our studies and essentially say, \u201cYeah, we didn\u2019t find much.\u201d It was honest data, and people believe it when you publish negative data that says, \u201cWe went through that much trouble, we spent $100,000, and we found nothing.\u201d But we found these people who were a little bit different than the others.<\/p>\n

So we\u2019d sit around and spitball. These were normal people, by the way; we were not taking asthmatics or people with [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease]. They were not diabetic. There are people we know full well will have an exaggerated response, and we didn\u2019t look at any of them. We looked at what are called \u201capparently healthy people\u201d \u2014 the people who go to the physician and are told nothing\u2019s wrong with them.<\/p>\n

My doctorate was not in exercise science; it was in biomedical science, from a medical school environment. Somewhere along the line, I was exposed to something called the cold pressor test. It has been around longer than both of us. Physicians 80 years ago would have somebody come into their lab or clinic, and they\u2019d say, \u201cHey, we\u2019re going to put your hand in a bucket of ice water for two minutes and see what that does to your blood pressure.\u201d It almost sounds like a fourth-grade sleepover prank for the first kid to fall asleep.<\/p>\n

But we started doing the test, and we took a pretty conservative approach, meaning that if we put someone\u2019s hand in the ice water and their systolic blood pressure \u2014 that\u2019s the top number, 120 over 80 is sort of the high end for good blood pressure \u2014 and if their systolic number went to at least 20 millimeters of mercury, then we call them cold pressure test positive, or CPT positive.<\/p>\n

None of these were people who were hypertensive. They had normal blood pressure. Nothing was wrong with them as far as their medical team could observe. But how many of these [CPT positive] people are sitting around? If you take the average population, 10% to 15% will be cold pressor test positive. We don\u2019t necessarily know if this is a bad thing. It may be contextual, but these are people we can verifiably measure with something as simple as a blood pressure cuff and a bucket of ice water. You can verify their physiology is more reactive within a couple of minutes than someone else\u2019s. <\/p>\n

We suspected that if we took these people and then exercised them in the smoke, they would have an exaggerated response compared with people who weren\u2019t CPT positive. And so that\u2019s what we did, and that\u2019s what we found.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s fascinating. So the practical takeaway is, unless you\u2019ve done this test yourself, you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re one of these people who\u2019s particularly reactive to wildfire smoke?<\/p>\n

You have to always be careful that you don\u2019t make big, broad, blanket applications from one study. We would need to confirm or refute it with additional studies, and that\u2019s a matter of getting grant money and conducting those next-generation investigations. <\/p>\n

But here\u2019s something we can glean: We know that people who have an exaggerated response to a cold pressor test are more likely to have hypertension. And they\u2019re more likely to have it earlier \u2014 instead of getting high blood pressure at 50, 60, or 70, they\u2019re going to get it at 30 or 40. We know they\u2019re more likely to eventually suffer from heart failure; it seems to develop more in people who have this sort of reactive response. While the cold pressor test response is not predictive in and of itself of anything \u2014 future diabetes, heart failure, heart attacks, hypertension, none of that \u2014 people with all of those conditions are more likely to be cold pressor test positive. <\/p>\n

The way I would take it is, if you are somebody who is not in great health, isn\u2019t fit, or if you have creeping blood pressure or a family history of heart disease, blood pressure, or metabolic derangement like diabetes, you are the kind of person who needs to be a little bit more careful [in the smoke].<\/p>\n

Is there an air quality level at which you would tell a young, healthy person \u201cDon\u2019t go for your morning run?\u201d<\/p>\n

An educated guess is the best we can do right now. Every study is a brick in the bigger metaphorical wall of understanding this. What we can say is: If you are young and apparently healthy, the threshold would be maybe even up into the \u201cunhealthy for sensitive groups\u201d number. They\u2019re probably okay. But then again, how hard are they working? How long are they outside? If you\u2019re working very hard, your ventilatory rate is much, much higher. And how long are you staying out? What is the long-term impact year after year? <\/p>\n

There are epidemiologic studies that can demonstrate that if you\u2019ve lived downwind from major wildfire events for decades, it\u2019s going to impact your health. That\u2019s not debated. But what is the short-term impact? We don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Indoor air pollution<\/a> is a major issue during these events, too. Would you advise someone to skip the gym on a particularly smoky day? <\/p>\n

When it\u2019s smoky outside, it makes sense to say, \u201cLet\u2019s just stay indoors.\u201d But then the question is, is some of that smoke getting indoors? Sure enough, it is. Then the question is, how much? And the answer is, it depends on the air handling systems in the building; how many people are coming in and out; whether the windows open; how many doors are there; are they left open; what are they using to heat and cool the place; do they have high-volume HEPA filtration; and are they changing that filtration?<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s dial back. We have two ends of a spectrum. You have a leaky building. Doors are open. Windows are open. Lots of people are coming in and out. In that scenario, the air inside is only about 20% or 30% better than the air outside. And that\u2019s not very good. <\/p>\n

But then let\u2019s go to the other end of the spectrum, to a building that is being kept shut. They\u2019re controlling who can come in and out, and there are two sets of doors to help buffer that. Which is better in a smoky situation? The places with the HEPA filtration, high-volume air turnover, and where they change the filters. But in that case, you\u2019re still going to have 25% of that particulate matter inside, even if you can\u2019t perceive that it\u2019s there. That\u2019s not good news. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the end of the day, everyone should make decisions based on their own risk tolerance. But John…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[51603,51601,4139,51602,147,154,31481,81,18645,95],"class_list":["post-210901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-syria","tag-adaptation","tag-am-briefing","tag-climate","tag-climate-tech","tag-economy","tag-energy","tag-homepage","tag-politics","tag-sustainability","tag-syria"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116935262383026933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}