When wildfires make the air smoky, here’s how to protect your health : NPR

Juana Summers, host:

Canadian forest fire smoke affects air quality in Midwest and Northeast. Alejandra Borunda of NPR joins us now to talk about the risks for smoke health and what you can do to protect yourself. Hi.

Alejandra Borunda, byline: Hi, Juana.

Summers: So, Alejandra, many people woke up this week in a fairly unpleasant air. What is the current situation with smoke?

Borunda: Yes, so a large part of the smoke comes from forest fires in Canada. And the wind models at the moment take the big lakes and a lot of northeast. There are also fires that burn in California and Arizona around the Grand Canyon and in the North West. So there is just a lot of smoke all the time.

Summers: Right. And when it is smoked, it generally means that the air quality index, or AQI, rises. What does that tell us?

Borunda: Yes, so the AQI incorporates several different types of pollution, including fine particles, which are one of the main components of forest smoke. Experts say that it is not a perfect measure of smoke risk by any section, but it gives us a fairly good idea of the gravity of the air. And in general, numbers under 50 are generally considered to be OK. Above this, the risks are starting to increase, especially for sensitive people, such as the elderly or children or those who suffer from respiratory diseases. I am starting to be very careful around 100. And then when you start to see figures like 150 or more, what is happening in the Midwest and the North of New York at the moment is considered unhealthy for almost everyone.

Summers: Right. Got it. Ok, so all the smoke, what does that mean for our health?

Borunda: You know, smoke is not good for us, complex.

Nicholas Nassikas: breathing bad things, the bad air, is bad for the body.

Borunda: It’s Nicholas Nassikas. He is a pulmonologist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. And he co-author a study in nature communications which found that 15,000 people died of forest smoke with high climate content between 2006 and 2020. The idea is essentially like that. Climate change aggravates forest fires, which makes smoke heavier, which causes more deaths. And smoke has never been listed as an official cause of death for anyone in the United States, but the number, for me, shows that it is a big problem.

Summers: Yes, I mean, 15,000 people, it’s a bit.

Borunda: Yeah. And I also want to be clear. Smoke does not have to kill us to be bad for our health. Thus, these small and tiny toxic particles of smoke can become very deep in the lungs and from there to the blood circulation, where they lead to inflammation, which worsens many asthma health problems with heart disease and even brain problems. And there is now a growing concern that smoke that has traveled a long way, like northern Canada, could be very bad. Erin Landguth studies the health of the population at the University of Montana, and she notes that forest smoke is mainly composed of burned carbon.

Erin Landguth: Because it is 70% carbon, roughly, there is more potential to oxidize.

Borunda: And you may have already heard this term, oxidation. And it can create more free radicals, which can be very damaging inside the body.

Summers: Ok, help us here. What can people do to protect themselves?

Borunda: So, the thing, n ° 1, is to check the quality of your air. You can do this on your weather application or on airnot.gov or via something like Purleaur. I check it every morning. Carlos Gould is a scientist of environmental health at the University of California San Diego. It says, it is important to be careful, even when the sky is not, like, scary from orange that we have already seen.

Carlos Gould: When smoke from forest fires is lower than a level to which we can feel or see it, we cannot act.

Borunda: Like stay inside in the filtered air, for example. And Gould says that the breathing air at these levels, which is well in the unhealthy area now, which can have health consequences. So, overall, he says he limits your time outside. Maybe you wear a N-95 mask if you can. And in your home, close your doors and windows and run an air filter if you can.

Summers: I mean, it’s something that I think a lot with as much time that I spend outside. It really seems that it is a reality with which we will all live for some time now.

Borunda: Oh, yeah. I think about it too. And unfortunately, I think it is.

Summers: It’s Alejandra Borunda of NPR. Thank you so much.

Borunda: Yes, it was great to speak.

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