WILD FIRES on the west coast of the United States are increasing under climate change and their smoke carries a threat to farmworkers, a study has warned.

Researchers at the University of California-Irvine found that farmworkers in the prime wine country of California’s Sonoma County, which saw wild fires in 2020, are paying a heavy price for increasing numbers of blazes by being exposed to high levels of air pollution.

They said the monitoring of when it was safe to work there during wild fires did not adequately protect farmworkers.