Timescales of Gaseous Smoke Contamination Indoors from Real and Simulated Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires

Published

December 5, 2025

Author(s)

Michael Link, Nathan Lima, Ryan Falkenstein-Smith, Thomas Cleary, Aika Davis, Steven Emmerich, Rileigh Robertson, Dustin Poppendieck

Abstract

Fires occurring at the wildland-urban interface (WUI) can produce smoke that contains unique chemicals from the combustion of urban structures which then can contaminate nearby buildings and affect indoor air quality. Assessing occupational safety or property loss from WUI smoke contamination is challenging, in part, because of a lack of measurements detailing chemical contamination in real indoor environments after WUI events. Here we mimic contamination from a WUI fire by repeatedly exposing a test house to smoke from combustion of residential building surrogates and measure the persistence of volatile non-methane organic gas (NMOG) contamination. We observe an increase in emission rates of 31 NMOGs over the 1.5-month burn exposure time indicating a buildup of surface reservoirs indoors. We observe off-gassing timescales of less than 10 days for many highly volatile NMOGs like acetonitrile, acrylonitrile, and styrene. Other NMOGs, like naphthalene and C12 aromatics, show emissions persistently elevated above background for at least three months after the end of the experiments. The NMOG emissions from contamination in the test house were much lower compared to a house affected by the Marshall Fire in Colorado. However, NMOG off-gassing timescales measured in the test house were longer.

Citation

ACS ES&T Air

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

wildland-urban interface, smoke contamination, indoor air quality, non-methane organic gases, proton-transfer reaction mass spectrometry

Citation

Link, M. , Lima, N. , Falkenstein-Smith, R. , Cleary, T. , Davis, A. , Emmerich, S. , Robertson, R. and Poppendieck, D. (2025), Timescales of Gaseous Smoke Contamination Indoors from Real and Simulated Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Fires, ACS ES&T Air, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=960671 (Accessed May 1, 2026)

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