The Role of Unseen Air Quality in the Prevention and Management of Diseases, Diseases and Other Health and Hygiene Issues
It’s important that we think of these things as we do our other health or hygiene processes. It’s a process. It’s not one moment in time that we take a specific action and we’re protected,” he said.
Not everybody is equally vulnerable to poor air quality, he said. It can be especially harmful for certain groups, including those with lung and heart disease, the elderly and pregnant people. Poorer communities already at a higher risk for diseases that can be worsened by unsafe air are also less able to pay for protective measures needed to guard against exposure.
“If you’ve got a red alert for air quality, it’s probably not the time to go out and go for that jog or go for that run,” he said, “because you’re breathing in more air and you’re breathing in more air more deeply.”
The severity of poor air quality can also vary, which is why many agencies use color-coded systems (green is typically the best, while red is the worst) to communicate how bad the air is in a certain place at a given time.
“This is something that I think even for folks who are not involved to kind of pay attention to,” Jeff Schlegelmilch, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University, told NPR this week, “because this is the type of situation that we’re expecting that we’re going to see more of — not less of — into the future.”
Smoke and Air Quality in New England from Fires in Québec to Our Own Backyard, and Implications for Air Quality and Health
In states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and several other states moderate air quality and air quality very poor for certain groups were recorded in the air quality database.
State officials in New England were expecting the smoke from the fire to linger over the area for a few days.
The fires are still burning, despite officials hope that precipitation will help suppress them later in the week.
Many of the latest fires in Québec are out of control, so they’re sending smoke across the border with the US.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at a news conference on Monday that this was a scary time for a lot of people.
Climate change is causing a particularly brutal wildfire season this year in Canada. Blazes have recently flared up across Alberta, British Columbia and Nova Scotia.
But authorities from New England to as far south as Georgia were warning people to beware of poor air quality and the health problems that can result from breathing in too much smoke.
“From the fires in Canada to those occurring in our own backyard, are these examples of the intensifying climate crisis?” said New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy on Wednesday.
Climate change is making the wildfire seasons longer, and the blazes are burning more area due to the hot and dry conditions.
The Effect of Wildfire Smoke on Public Recreation and Outdoor Activities in the U.S.: New York City and Washington, D.C., Public Schools
On Tuesday, the National Weather Service said air quality across the U.S. had “plummeted,” and by Wednesday morning images of grayish smoky air were ubiquitous in the news and across social media.
New York City’s public school system, the largest in the U.S., said Wednesday that it was canceling all outdoor activities. Washington, D.C., public schools did the same, scrapping recess, outdoor physical education classes and other events outside.
“Unless more fires start burning, I don’t expect the concentrations to go up too much higher,” DeCarlo said. “I think the next couple days we’re going to see a shift in that weather pattern [which will] start to push that smoke away from where we are.”
According to a professor at the University, the weather conditions in the U.S. are making it feasible for wildfire smoke to spread.
Officials in some areas were urging people to stay inside as much as they can, avoid travel if possible and refrain from any exercise or strenuous activity.
Millions of people along the East Coast and further inland woke up to a cloud of hazy air Wednesday morning, after smoke from rampant wildfires in Canada floated south across the border and blanketed large swaths of the U.S.