LA Residents Returning To The Ruins Face Complex Threats: Lead, Carcinogens Now, Mudslides When The Rains Return

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At a press conference on Thursday, residents were warned against returning to their homes because of these toxins. Yonah Halpern, a spokesperson with LA county public works, said the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and county fire department will be going house-to-house to assess and remove hazardous materials.

Homes and cars contain a multitude of potentially hazardous materials, including lead, battery acid, arsenic and carcinogens found in plastics. Such materials could be contained within the ash of any damaged structure, or have drifted from adjoining properties. And anyone sifting through or cleaning a property without proper protection could face risk of inhaling or absorbing the substances through their skin. “The chance that there are toxic materials derived from things that were safe before the fire is very high,” Field said. “Those toxics layer on top of the risk that already comes from simply being exposed to large amounts of ash and smoke.”

Longer term, residents should also be conscious of the risks of repeat natural disasters, especially mudslides, said Joshua West, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Southern California and an expert on debris flows, the scientific name for mudslides and similar sudden movements of earth.

Wildfires increase the risk of mudslides by making a landscape vulnerable to swift erosion in the event of a rainstorm, West explains. In January 2018, for example, heavy storms hitting an area in Montecito that had burned in the weeks before triggered a mudslide that killed 23. While authorities have a pretty good idea of how to evaluate which areas have the most risk of a mudslide following a wildfire, West said, the relative unpredictability of precipitation patterns means it is not an exact science.

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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/17/california-homes-fire-toxic-mudslides