After the LA fires, scientists study the toxic hazards left behind

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy, and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. PASADENA, Calif.—Nicole Byrne watched anxiously from across the small kitchen in her home as Parham Azimi, a Harvard University researcher, lined up sample bottles next to the running tap. As his phone timer chimed, indicating the water pipes had been flushed for the required five minutes, Azimi began filling collection bottles and packing them to be mailed to a lab in San Diego later that day. Byrne knew it would take weeks to get results back for most of the samples, but she was finally one step closer to answers. Although her home is nearly two miles from Altadena, one of two communities devastated by the wildfires that broke out in Los Angeles on January 7, the rented bungalow on Loma Vista Street in Pasadena was located downwind of the burn zone. Byrne, a therapist and mother of two preschoole ... Read full article.