The recent Camp Fire in Butte County taught us many lessons. As student pharmacists, we want to emphasize the importance of health preparedness. Wildfire smoke is dangerous. If you have asthma or other respiratory conditions, this may be especially concerning. We recommend staying inside buildings with proper filtration. While outdoors, be sure to wear an appropriate respirator mask. It may be worthwhile to purchase masks from your local pharmacy or hardware store to have them readily available at home. Be sure to choose the right kind of mask, use an N95 or N100 mask. Surgical masks and bandanas won’t cut it since they do not protect you against the fine particles in smoke.
It is equally important to keep your medications in mind. If you have a respiratory condition, it is important to have your inhalers with you at all times as environmental changes from a fire could trigger an attack. To replace lost medications, you can return to your home pharmacy for an emergency supply. If that is not possible, prescriptions can also be filled at a different pharmacy of the same chain, such as Walgreens or CVS.
In preparation for these unpredictable situations or even as a general safe medication practice, we recommend always having an updated list of your medications on hand. Your local pharmacist can help you with that.
Tiffany Guan and Stephanie Sin
San Bruno
The letter writers are student pharmacists, UCSF School of Pharmacy Class of 2020.
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Keep the discussion civilized. Absolutely NO personal attacks or insults directed toward writers, nor others who make comments.
Keep it clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
Don't threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Anyone violating these rules will be issued a warning. After the warning, comment privileges can be revoked.