Poor Air Quality Contributed To Death, Coroner Says Grass Burning, Asthma To Blame, West Says

Kootenai County’s coroner confirmed Wednesday that air pollution likely contributed to a Rathdrum woman’s death.

Marsha Mason died of an acute asthma attack around 5 a.m. last Thursday, according to coroner Dr. Robert West.

The day before, heavy North Idaho field burning had filled area skies with a thick brown haze of smoke.

Mason’s death certificate lists two contributing factors: the chronic asthma she suffered for decades and “severe pollution,” West told The Spokesman-Review.

He added there’s no way to prove pollution triggered the attack.

Rather, it appears the poor air quality acted in combination with the 49-year-old woman’s existing health conditions, West said.

“The level of air quality, I think it was just additive. It was the straw on the camel’s back,” he said. “I am very sensitive to the issue of field burning. But I think that the universal consensus was that last Wednesday was a particularly adverse smoke event.” Mason’s husband declined to comment.

The Mason case comes as parallel lawsuits aimed at banning field burning move through federal courts in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene.

Save Our Summers, a Spokane clean-air group, wants the practice of field burning sharply limited under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The group charges that smoke discriminates against two children with breathing problems by keeping them from school.

Health professionals for several years have questioned the practice of field burning.

The Idaho Medical Association recognizes that agricultural burning is a health concern.

“This is absurd,” said Dr. John Strimas, who runs the North Idaho Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Center in Coeur d’Alene. “Nobody needs to even think twice about allowing continuing burning. I don’t see any room to even argue about it.”

A call to the North Idaho Farmers Association, representing growers on the Rathdrum Prairie, was not returned Wednesday.

Randy Suess, a Colfax farmer, questioned the significance of the coroner’s finding. Suess, whose father suffers from asthma, expressed sympathy for Mason but questioned any move to blame field smoke.

“How much of a contributing factor is it? Was it 1 percent or 50? I bet they won’t even say,” he said. “I bet it is a contributing factor but that lady had a myriad of other problems.”

Generally, Kentucky bluegrass seed and wheat farmers say burning stubble in the late summer and fall is the only way they can afford to prepare their fields. Suess, however, says media reports tend to exaggerate the amount of burning farmers do, especially in Washington state where regulators sharply restricted the practice.

“Out of our 1,400 acres we’re going to burn 37,” Suess said. “There’s a lot of farmers who are dead-set against burning, too.”

Meanwhile, an Idaho official said the coroner’s finding could influence statewide smoke management policies.

Idaho does not regulate agricultural burning. Growers register to burn and pay a per acre fee.

Right now, the only recognized voluntary smoke management program for agricultural burning in the state is on the Rathdrum Prairie.

“We’ll certainly need to evaluate any information from the coroner on this and go from there,” said Dan Redline, with the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality in Coeur d’Alene.

Mason suffered from severe asthma and was diagnosed with breast cancer last year. She also smoked cigarettes for years until she quit last February and worked at Granny’s Pantry, where she was exposed to smokers, according to her physician, Dr. Richard Caldwell.

On Sept. 13, a combination of field burning smoke sent air quality plummeting to dangerous levels.

A gauge east of Rathdrum at 8 p.m. showed particulate concentrations in a one-hour snapshot measured nearly three times the level that triggers health alerts, according to Redline. However, such health alerts are only issued when air is unhealthy for a 24-hour period. The U.S. Forest Service was doing some limited prescribed burning in Shoshone County last week, fire officials said.

But the smoke drifting through Rathdrum by Wednesday night most likely came from torched agricultural stubble fields on the Rathdrum Prairie and the Coeur d’Alene Reservation, Redline said.

A headline in the Coeur d’Alene Press on Sunday - “Smoke didn’t kill asthmatic” - and story implied that Mason’s death likely resulted from an adverse reaction to competing medications for asthma and bronchitis. That report was inaccurate.

Coroner West said Wednesday he ruled out trouble with medications as a cause of death.

“I don’t think there was any cross reaction,” he said. “I think this is a lady who just had really severe asthma.”