Nicole Byrne watched anxiously from across the small kitchen in her home as Parham Azimi, a Harvard University researcher, lined up sample bottles next to the running tap. … Azimi was there gathering water samples as part of an unprecedented academic collaboration led by health, environmental, data and wildfire risk assessment researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, the University of California, Davis and the University of Texas at Austin. With support from the Spiegel Family Fund, the universities formed the LA Fire Health Study Consortium in late January after the fires killed 29 people, destroyed more than 16,000 structures, primarily in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, and exposed millions to particulate matter, gases, chemicals, heavy metals, asbestos, PFAS, microplastics and other toxic pollutants.