I recently did a deep dive into woodsmoke as I couldn't understand how ~2 million years of evolution with woodsmoke hadn't rendered us completely immune to its effects.

I couldn't at that time find a paper that showed that it was very harmful to humans, just a lot proving that it was harmful to mice, rats, rabbits, and guinea pigs (and a lot of forwards stating the dangers then linking to another animal research paper)—which bothered me—rodents don't have ~2 millions years of woodsmoke in their evolution history. I found papers about forest fires that some showed bad effects other were inconclusive and wouldn't;t draw conclusions as there were too much smoke from other combustable substances mixed into the smoke. I also found a paper about firefighters exposed to woodsmoke that found no ill effects on them.

So I remained unconvinced.

But this paper is different: not animals, large study, evidence. SO I will read it in-depth.

But I am still baffled. How could over a million years of evolution not have bred this out of us? I'm genuinely curious.