Air quality advisory for Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley remain in effect

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

The Air Quality Advisory that was issued on Sunday remains in effect for Metro Vancouver and Fraser Valley as wildfire smoke moves into the region.

The regional authority of Metro Vancouver issued the advisory due to “high concentrations” of fine particulate matter expected over the next few days.

“Smoke concentrations may vary widely across the region as winds and temperatures change, and as wildfire behaviour changes,” Metro Vancouver said.

The advisory warns that fine particulate matter, which are airborne solid or liquid droplets, can easily make its way indoors because of its small size.

Those with chronic underlying medical conditions or acute infections such as COVID-19 are advised to postpone or reduce outdoor physical activity until the advisory is lifted.

Exposure to fine particulate matter is particularly a concern for pregnant women, children, older adults, and people experiencing homelessness.

Anyone experiencing symptoms such as chest discomfort, shortness of breath, coughing, or wheezing should seek prompt medical attention.

Indoor spaces with HEPA air filtration systems  may offer relief from the air pollution.

The advisory noted that onshore winds are expected on Tuesday and may begin to clear the smoke and hazy skies.

Air quality advisory for Metro Vancouver, Fraser Valley remain in effect | News

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Unprecedented air quality alert continues across all of Minnesota, air quality alert due to wildfire smoke in effect through Tuesday, Aug. 3

Posted on August 2, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) has issued an air quality alert for all of Minnesota. This is an unprecedented significant air quality event for Minnesota, extending over many days. The alert takes effect Friday, July 30, beginning at 12 p.m. and runs until Tuesday, Aug. 3, at 12 p.m. The affected area includes all of Minnesota, and the tribal nations of Grand Portage, Fond du Lac, Upper Sioux, Leech Lake, Red Lake, Mille Lacs, and Prairie Island.

Smoke from Canadian wildfires lingers over most of Minnesota. There will be some slight improvement in air quality throughout Friday and Friday night. However, on Saturday northerly winds behind a cold front will bring more smoke from wildfires located north of the Canadian border in Ontario and Manitoba into Minnesota. This reinforcing batch of heavy smoke is expected to arrive starting Saturday morning. Smoke will continue pouring into the state throughout Saturday and into Sunday. High pressure will build over the area for Sunday and remain over the area for Monday into Tuesday morning. Smoke will recirculate under the high pressure, leading to prolonged period of heavy smoke.

Fine particle levels will begin to improve Tuesday as southerly winds start moving the smoke out of the state. Fine particle levels are expected to reach the Purple AQI category, a level considered very unhealthy for everyone, across north central and south central Minnesota. This area includes Roseau, Baudette, Hibbing, Brainerd, St Cloud, the Twin Cities, and the tribal nations of Red Lake, Leech Lake, and Mille Lacs. Fine particle levels are expected to reach the Red AQI category, a level considered unhealthy for everyone, across northern, central, and southeast Minnesota. This area includes East Grand Forks, Moorhead, Ely, Detroit Lakes, Alexandria, Ortonville, Mankato, Albert Lea, Rochester, and the tribal nations of Upper Sioux, Fond du Lac, and Prairie Island. Fine particle levels are expected to reach the Orange AQI category, a level that is considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, for far southwestern and northeastern Minnesota. This area includes Marshall, Duluth, Two Harbors, and the tribal nation of Grand Portage.

Sensitive groups whose health is affected by unhealthy air quality: There are people who are more likely to be affected when fine particle pollution reaches an unhealthy level.

People who have asthma or other breathing conditions like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

People who have heart disease or high blood pressure.

Children and older adults.

People of all ages who are doing extended or heavy, physical activity like playing sports or working outdoors.

People who don’t have air conditioning to reduce indoor air pollution.

Health effects: Air pollution can aggravate heart and cardiovascular disease as well as lung diseases like asthma and COPD. When the air quality is unhealthy, people with these conditions may experience symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, wheezing, coughing, or fatigue. If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, use your inhalers as directed and contact your health care provider.

In areas where air quality is in the Purple (Very Unhealthy) AQI category, sensitive individuals may experience significant aggravation of heart or lung disease and respiratory conditions. The general population may also experience a significant increase in respiratory effects.

In areas where air quality is in the Red (Unhealthy) AQI category, sensitive individuals may experience increased aggravation of heart or lung disease and respiratory conditions. The general population may also experience increased respiratory effects. I

n areas where air quality is in the Orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) AQI category, sensitive individuals may experience aggravation of heart or lung disease and increasing likelihood of respiratory conditions.

Take precautions: Everyone should take precautions when the air quality is unhealthy.

Take it easy and listen to your body.

Limit, change, or postpone your physical activity level.

If possible, stay away from local sources of air pollution like busy roads and wood fires.

Keep indoor air as clean as possible. Use indoor air filtration or air conditioning with the fresh-air intake closed/set on recirculate to reduce indoor air pollution.

If you have asthma or other breathing conditions like COPD make sure you have your relief/rescue inhaler with you.

People with asthma should review and follow guidance in their written asthma action plan. Make an appointment to see your health provider if you don’t have an asthma action plan.

In areas where air quality is in the Purple (Very Unhealthy) AQI category, sensitive individuals should avoid any outdoor activity. Everyone else should avoid prolonged exertion.

In areas where air quality is in the Red (Unhealthy) AQI category, sensitive individuals should avoid prolonged exertion. Everyone else should limit prolonged exertion.

In areas where air quality is in the Orange (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups) AQI category, sensitive individuals should limit prolonged exertion.

Pollution reduction tips: The main sources of fine particle pollution is any activity that uses fuel. Conserving energy and buying clean, renewable energy are great lifestyle choices to help reduce overall pollution.

Reduce vehicle trips.

Encourage use of public transport, or carpool, when possible.

Postpone use of gasoline powered lawn and garden equipment on air alert days. Use battery or manual equipment instead.

Avoid backyard fires.

For information on current air quality conditions in your area and to sign up for daily air quality forecasts and alert notifications by email, text message, phone, or the Minnesota Air mobile app, visit MPCA’s Air Quality Index webpage. You can find additional information about health and indoor and outdoor air quality at Air Quality and Health webpage.

Unprecedented air quality alert continues across all of Minnesota, air quality alert due to wildfire smoke in effect through Tuesday, Aug. 3 – Red Lake Nation News

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Researchers show how air pollution may cause chronic sinusitis

Posted on July 30, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) is a 12-week or longer condition during which the sinuses get infected or irritated, become swollen, are severely congested and secrete mucus into the throat. CRS also can cause facial pain, pressure and loss of smell, and in some cases, it may be associated with depression, anxiety, impaired sleep and low quality of life. Although the factors leading to CRS are unknown, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have provided what may be the first evidence that long-term exposure to tiny particulate air pollution is one of them.

A report on the findings was published June 28, 2021, in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

“We assessed patients experiencing chronic rhinosinusitis in areas where exposure to environmental air pollution known as PM2.5—inhalable, particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size [about 30 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair]—may have been high,” says lead author Murugappan “Murray” Ramanathan, M.D., rhinologist and associate professor of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), PM2.5 (the PM stands for “particulate matter”) is the term for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air. PM2.5 consists of many materials that vary with location, including dust, dirt, soot, smoke, organic compounds and metals. It has been linked to cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, decline in cognitive thinking ability, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, asthma and premature death.

Previous research by Ramanathan and his team linked PM2.5 to loss of smell.

In their latest study, the Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers looked at a population of 6,102 patients age 18 and older, including 2,034 with CRS who did not have the disorder for up to five years before it was diagnosed. Mean PM2.5 exposures were calculated for each patient based on his or her residential address postal code at 12, 24, 36 and 60 months prior to CRS diagnosis.

Air pollution data for the study came from the EPA’s Air Quality System. The researchers fed the data into a complex computer model—incorporating meteorological and satellite-based environmental measurements, land-use information and simulations of airborne chemical movement—to estimate the PM2.5 pollution levels within the participants’ residential ZIP codes. The model was created by study lead author Zhenyu Zhang, a Johns Hopkins Medicine otolaryngology postdoctoral fellow.

The research team found that patients exposed to higher PM2.5 concentrations over a long period of time were more likely to be diagnosed with CRS, regardless of how the exposure occurred. For example, exposure over 60 months was associated with an approximately one-and-a-half-fold increase in developing the disorder. There also was a nearly five times greater risk of developing severe pansinusitis (inflammation in all four sinuses).

“To our knowledge, this is the first study to report that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter air pollution increases the odds of developing CRS, particularly the most severe form of the disease,” says Ramanathan.

This research validates a 2017 study by Ramanathan’s team demonstrating that long-term PM2.5 exposure in mice resulted in chronic sinonasal inflammation.

The Johns Hopkins Medicine team is conducting ongoing research to seek a better understanding of how race and socioeconomic status may contribute to air pollution exposure, and in turn, development of chronic rhinosinusitis.

Researchers show how air pollution may cause chronic sinusitis
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Doctors, air pollution experts forecast worsening health effects of wildfire smoke

Posted on July 29, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Advice for a five-day episode doesn’t work when you’re talking about an entire potential season

Health experts warn that a shift in mindset and new solutions are needed as exposure to smoke from bigger wildfires becomes a regular occurrence.

While the longer-term health effects of exposure to wildfire smoke have yet to be thoroughly studied, linkages between disease, death and air pollution in general offer hints, said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician in Yellowknife.

“Stroke, heart disease, cancer, chronic or respiratory diseases, these are all worsened by air pollution,” Howard said in a recent interview from Cranbrook, B.C., where smoke from a nearby wildfire had rolled in while her family was at the beach.

“The same reasons we want to quickly move to a low-carbon economy to decrease impacts from fossil fuel-related air pollution are reasons for us to worry about wildfire-related pollution we’re now seeing enhanced as a result of climate change.”

Until recently, smoky skies in Western Canada have been occasional, making it difficult to study health impacts, said Michael Brauer, a professor focused on environment and health at the University of British Columbia’s faculty of medicine.

“When we get into a situation now, where this is happening every summer in some communities, and it may only be one to two weeks, but … that’s definitely the highest air pollution you will face throughout the whole year, what does that mean?”

It’s unclear if the smoke that’s experienced year after year has a cumulative effect, he said.

“It probably depends on all kinds of specific conditions, other risk factors.”

However, Brauer said, there does not seem to be much of a difference between the smoke and general air pollution when measuring for fine particulate matter, a mixture of tiny pollutants that can penetrate deeply into the respiratory system.

The potential cardiovascular effects of wildfire smoke are less well known compared with other kinds of air pollution, he said, “but based on what we know from air pollution in general, there’s very few organ systems that are not affected.”

The clearest impacts of wildfire smoke exposure are felt by people with pre-existing conditions, such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and evidence is building that smoke exposure can affect people with heart disease, trigger a heart attack or stroke, and aggravate type two diabetes, Brauer said.

A few studies suggest that pregnant women who are in their last trimester when exposed to smoke are more likely to give birth to a baby of lower weight, he added.

Another study in Montana found the rate of influenza was higher a few months after a bad fire season, he said, suggesting people were less able to fight the illness.

“That’s not maybe a lifelong effect, but it does show that there seems to be something that persists, which is consistent with what we know for air pollution.”

Howard has seen firsthand the health impacts of what she called “one of the longest and most severe wildfire smoke exposures in the global literature base.”

As wildfires and smoke swept across the Northwest Territories in the summer of 2014, she said, it was harder and took longer than usual to treat and discharge people who showed up at the emergency department with symptoms of asthma.

Howard later worked on a study that found double the number of people with asthma showed up at the emergency department compared with earlier years.

Worsening wildfire seasons mean public health officials must rethink their existing advice, which tends to focus on sheltering from smoke in the short term, she said.

“Cut and dried advice that used to work for a three-day or a five-day episode, it doesn’t really work when you’re talking about an entire potential season.”

Communities in wildfire-prone areas must plan for clean-air shelters, well-ventilated recreation centres and other infrastructure to protect the most vulnerable, she said, from kids to seniors to outdoor workers and people experiencing homelessness.

Brauer also suggests that people with underlying health conditions install high-efficiency air filters at home and meet with their health-care providers in the spring to ensure they have enough medication to last through a prolonged wildfire season.

Failing to adapt and prepare for prolonged smoky periods is costly, both in lives and financially, said Brauer, pointingto a 2020 analysis of the impacts of fine particulate matter during recent wildfire seasons by researchers with Health Canada.They estimated the annual cost of associated with premature deaths due to acute or short-term exposure was between $410 million to $1.8 billion, depending on the severity of the fire season. The estimated cost of premature deaths attributable to chronic exposure was between $4.3 and $19 billion per year, the modelling found.

Doctors, air pollution experts forecast worsening health effects of wildfire smoke – Saanich News

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Particles from Paints, Pesticides Have Deadly Impact

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution triggered by use of common chemicals, fuels may kill 10 times more people than previously recognized

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world die too soon every year because of exposure to air pollution caused by our daily use of chemical products and fuels, including paints, pesticides, charcoal and gases from vehicle tailpipes, according to a new CU Boulder-led study.

The new work, led by former CIRES postdoctoral researcher Benjamin Nault and CIRES Fellow Jose-Luis Jimenez, calculated that air pollution caused by “anthropogenic secondary organic aerosol” causes 340,000-900,000 premature deaths. Those are tiny particles in the atmosphere that form from chemicals emitted by human activities. 

And “that’s more than 10 times as many deaths as previously estimated,” said Nault, who is now a scientist at Aerodyne Research, Inc. His work, published today in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, builds on findings by CU Boulder, NOAA, NASA, and others that emissions from everyday products are increasingly important in forming pollutants in urban air.

“The older idea was that to reduce premature mortality, you should target coal-fired power plants or the transportation sector,” Nault said. “Yes, these are important, but we’re showing that if you’re not getting at the cleaning and painting products and other everyday chemicals, then you’re not getting at a major source.”

Atmospheric researchers have long understood that particles in the atmosphere small enough to be inhaled can damage people’s lungs and increase mortality. Studies have estimated that fine particle pollution, often called PM2.5, leads to 3-4 million premature deaths globally per year, possibly more. 

Many countries, including the United States, therefore have laws limiting how many of those particles get into the atmosphere. We regulate soot from power plants and diesel exhaust, for example, which are “direct” sources of particulate matter. And regulations also target fossil fuel emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, which can react in the atmosphere to form fine particles—an indirect, “secondary inorganic” source of particles.

The new work suggests that a third broad category of chemicals—anthropogenic secondary organic pollutants—is a significant indirect source of deadly fine particles. 

To determine the mortality impact of several sources of fine particles, the team dug into data from 11 comprehensive air quality studies carried out in cities around the world in the last two decades. They drew on detailed databases of chemical emissions from cities including Beijing, London and New York City, and they ran those numbers through sophisticated air quality models that also incorporate satellite data. 

They found that the production of secondary organic aerosol in those 11 cities was strongly correlated with specific organic compounds emitted by people’s activities. The chemicals at issue—called aromatics and intermediate- and semi-volatile organic compounds—are emitted from tailpipes and cooking fuels like wood and charcoal, and increasingly also from industrial solvents, house paints, cleaning products and other chemicals.

In previous work in Los Angeles, CIRES, NOAA and other scientists have reported that such volatile chemical products contribute as much as vehicles do to the formation of particle pollution. “What’s new here,” said co-author Brian McDonald, a NOAA scientist, “is that we are showing this is an issue in cities on three continents, North America, Europe and east Asia.” 

Air quality regulations have tended to focus on volatile chemicals that produce ozone, another hazardous pollutant, said Jimenez, who is also a professor of chemistry at CU Boulder. But it is increasingly clear, most recently from the new work, that chemicals which contribute little to ozone formation may still contribute seriously to particle formation. 

“Because this effect has been thought to be small, it hasn’t been targeted for control,” Jimenez said. “But when you take the atmospheric chemistry into account and put it into a model, you find that this particular source is killing a lot of people.”

Nault and Jimenez said they hope to expand their work to include more urban areas of the world, where there haven’t been enough measurements yet to confirm that volatile chemical products contribute substantially to fine particles. But the trend is holding so far in all places where there are enough measurements. 

“If you care about air pollution impacts on health and mortality, you have to take this problem seriously,” Jimenez concluded. 

Particles from Paints, Pesticides Have Deadly Impact | CIRES
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Smoke Across North America

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

While plumes of wildfire smoke from western North America have passed over the northeastern U.S. and Canada multiple times each summer in recent years, they often go unnoticed. That is because smoke that spreads far from its source typically moves at a fairly high altitude—between 5 and 10 kilometers—as winds blow it eastward.

The situation has been quite different this week, as attention-grabbing smoke poured into the eastern U.S. on July 20-21, 2021. Data from NASA’s Micro-Pulse Lidar Network (MPLNET) and Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) indicated that a significant amount of smoke was hovering between the land surface and 2 kilometers (1 mile) altitude. Haze darkened skies and reddened sunsets, unleashed a rash of code red and orange air quality warnings, and even left the scent of smoke in the air in some areas.

Of the large cities in the northeast, Philadelphia and New York City had some of the haziest skies. The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on NOAA-20 captured the natural-color image of smoke over the northeast shown above on July 20.

In New York City, levels of fine particulate pollution rose above 170 on the air quality index, a level considered harmful even for healthy people. “That’s a magnitude of particle pollution that New York City hasn’t seen in more than a decade,” said Ryan Stauffer, an atmospheric scientist based at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. The haze grew so thick at times that it even partially obscured the city’s iconic skyline.

While several forest fires are raging across North America, most of the smoke that found its way to the eastern U.S. likely originated from a cluster of fires near the border of the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario, just north of Minnesota. Fires burning farther to the west in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest of the United States may have contributed a small amount of smoke as well.

This map at the top of the page shows the concentration of black carbon particulates—commonly called soot—over North America on July 21, 2021. It is just one of several types of particles and gases found within wildfire smoke. The black carbon data come from the GEOS forward processing (GEOS-FP) model, which assimilates data from satellite, aircraft, and ground-based observing systems. To simulate black carbon, modelers include satellite observations of aerosols and fires. GEOS-FP also ingests meteorological data like air temperature, moisture, and winds to simulate the plume’s behavior.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE, GIBS/Worldview, and the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Story by Adam Voiland.

via Smoke Across North America

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New analysis reveals global distribution of toxic pollution and climate change: And provides top-ten list of countries at highest risk — and likely most equipped to immediately begin pollution risk reduction

Posted on July 23, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new analysis of global datasets shows low-income countries are significantly more likely to be impacted by both toxic pollution and climate change — and provides a list of at-risk countries most (and least) able to immediately begin direct efforts toward pollution risk reduction, according to a study published July 7, 2021 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Richard Marcantonio from the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, and colleagues.

In this age of the Anthropocene, it’s clear that human activities are destabilizing our planet across multiple systems. Previous research has shown that low-income countries face higher risks than high-income countries from toxic pollution and climate change; however, few studies have explored the relationship between these two risks.

To test the relationship between toxic pollution and climate change, the authors collated and analyzed three frequently used public datasets, ND-GAIN (Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index), EPI (Yale Environmental Performance Index), and GAHP (Global Alliance on Health and Pollution), using data for 176 countries from 2018.

They found a strong (rs = -0.798; 95% CI -0.852, -0.727) and statistically significant (p<0.0001) relationship between the spatial distribution of global climate risk and toxic pollution — in other words, countries most at risk for impacts of climate change were most often also the countries facing highest risks of toxic pollution. (And as other studies show, climate change and toxic pollution interact to create compounding issues: e.g. warming temperatures increase rates of heat-related illness/death as well as enhance the toxicity of environmental contaminants.) The top one-third of countries most at-risk represented over two-thirds of the world’s population, geographically concentrated in low-income countries across Africa and Southeast Asia. The authors note that the demographic, ecological, and social factors at work are interconnected and demonstrate broader patterns of inequality, and also emphasize that physical geography, local structural conditions (such as a relatively low capacity for environmental policy and enforcement), and external factors (such as foreign firms taking advantage of reduced environmental regulation) all play a role in exacerbating risks in these countries. Based on their analysis, the authors went on to create a “Target” list of top-ten countries that could provide maximum returns on any investment for risk reduction based on their risk as well as their structural capacity to enact changes (respectively: Singapore, Rwanda, China, India, Solomon Islands, Bhutan, Botswana, Georgia, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand).

The data used in this study do not capture all forms of harm or potential risk from toxic pollution and climate change — only those measured in the initial datasets. Additionally, the authors note that addressing impacts may require a finer intra-country assessment, since risks can vary widely within countries. However, the immediate findings clearly point to a need to jointly address the effects of pollution and climate change globally, while also suggesting an approach for policymakers worldwide.

The authors add: “Vast work has been done to understand the magnitude and distribution of risk from climate change and toxic pollution, separately. We wanted to know if the spatial distribution of these two types of environmental risks are similar and, unfortunately, our results say that in general they are.”

New analysis reveals global distribution of toxic pollution and climate change: And provides top-ten list of countries at highest risk — and likely most equipped to immediately begin pollution risk reduction — ScienceDaily
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New York air quality among worst in world as haze from western wildfires shrouds city

Posted on July 22, 2021 by Respro® UK Ltd

Smoke from wildfires in the west caused hazy skies as air quality index surged to 157 in Manhattan, well above threshold of 100

New York City air quality was among the worst in the world as cities across the eastern US were shrouded in smoke from wildfires raging several thousand miles away on the country’s west coast.

State officials in New York advised vulnerable people, such as those with asthma and heart disease, to avoid strenuous outdoor activity as air pollution soared to eclipse Lima in Peru and Kolkata in India to be ranked as the worst in the world on Tuesday.

Smoke from more than 80 major wildfires burning in the US west has caused hazy skies and plunging air quality in eastern American and Canadian cities including Philadelphia, Washington DC, Pittsburgh and Toronto, as well as New York, causing fiery sunrises and even bathing the moon in an unusual red tinge on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday morning, the air quality index surged to 157 in Manhattan, well above the threshold of 100 where health is considered to be threatened. Vulnerable people include pregnant women and the elderly, although even healthy people outside these groups can experience breathing difficulty, throat irritation and runny eyes when exposed to air this bad.

“I think it’s unusual to have this kind of haze, I don’t recall seeing this kind of thing,” said George Pope, professor of earth and environmental studies at Montclair State University, who added that he could not see Manhattan from his New Jersey office. “You can pretty much always see the skyline, at least a silhouette, if it’s a hazy day. This is, like, this is unprecedented.”

Satellite imagery shows that the smoke from the western fires has billowed into Canada and unfurled to the east, plunging states such as Minnesota into unhealthy air conditions. Winds are able to easily carry tiny sooty particles emitted from burning trees and vegetation, known as PM2.5, large distances. These PM2.5 particles can, when inhaled, burrow into the lungs and cause a variety of health problems.

“We’re seeing lots of fires producing a tremendous amount of smoke,” said David Lawrence, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. “By the time that smoke gets to the eastern portion of the country where it’s usually thinned out, there’s just so much smoke in the atmosphere from all these fires that it’s still pretty thick.”

The smoke is set to shift away from New York in the coming days but further widespread wildfires are expected in the coming months, with people in the US west hit worst by the smoke as well as the direct threat of the flames.

David Turnbull, an activist at the US Climate Action Network who lives in Portland, Oregon, tweeted that people on the eastern seaboard should take care in the unhealthy air but also “take care of how you talk about the hazy skies. Your wonderment about it is our dread here in the west. Your curiosity is our constant fear. We live every day for months fearing the winds will shift, the fires will rage, and the smoke will come.”Topics

New York air quality among worst in world as haze from western wildfires shrouds city | New York | The Guardian

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