Temperatures in the area are near 100 degrees and humidity as low as 15 percent. The southern part of California has seen very little rain, drying out vegetation and making it "ripe to burn," the National Weather Service (NWS) for Los Angeles warned.

Evacuation orders are in place for five areas in Ventura County, Calif., where the uncontained Canyon fire has now engulfed an area one-third the size of Manhattan.

But a growing body of research is reinforcing the knowledge that wildfire smoke is much more than an inconvenience — in fact, it’s actually killing far more people than the flames themselves. New research on the fallout of the Palisades and Eaton fires that ravaged Los Angeles in January bears this out.

New research argues that the Eaton and Palisades fires may have been far more deadly than what has been reflected in coroner reports.