Smoke from forest fires in Canada has engulfed the East Coast, blanketing cities in a haze and placing an estimated 100 million people on air quality alert. More 400 fires burning in British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario, and half are unchecked. New York City became the home of worst air quality in the world. Philadelphia also issued a red alarm codePeople are advised to stay indoors and clouds may continue to flood the area few more days coming, with smoke stretching across Washington, DC and down to Atlanta, Georgia.
In the United States, supercharged wildfires used to seem like a unique West Coast problemlike Campfire 2018 wipe out the town of Paradise in California. A variety of factors contributed to that massive blaze, including the area’s firefighting heritage, which caused dead bushes to pile up. What does climate change mean? hotter temperatures dry that brush out, so it burned catastrophically. That is also the problem in Canada today. Mike Flannigan, a professor of wildfires at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia, said the number of fires at this time of year was only slightly higher than average, but “the scale and intensity of the fires have increased. significantly up”. .
In other words: East Coast, welcome to the Pyrocene, or The age of the flame, as fire historian Stephen Pyne calls it. Climate change and human intervention in the landscape have combined to make wildfires bigger and more intense, big enough to create plumes of toxic smoke not just from Canada to the East Coast but across all continents. “Climate change is acting as a performance-enhancing factor: It exacerbates natural rhythms,” says Pyne. “There is no reason to think that those trends will suddenly stop.”
“It’s a global problem now,” said Mary Prunicki, director of health and air pollution research at Stanford University’s Sean N. Parker Center for Allergy Research. The immediate health effects of wildfire smoke exposure can be devastating for vulnerable people, but little is known about the long-term effects of short-term exposure. “This is relatively new, to have this kind of massive exposure to a group that has never been exposed before,” she said. \
Wildfire smoke is a complex combination of materials, including burned plant material and—if buildings catch on fire—man-made things like plastic. What makes smoke visible are its toxic particles—named PM 2.5 and 10, meaning particles smaller than 2.5 and 10 microns. But there are so many invisible discomfort in it too, like benzene, formaldehyde, carbon gas and even fungus. As smoke moves through the atmosphere, it can actually form new Chemical hazards over time, like ozone, worsen asthma. “The biggest health impacts are certainly from particulate matter,” said Rebecca Hornbrook, an atmospheric chemist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Control the plane through smoke and fire to study its components. “But there’s a lot that gets overlooked on the EPA’s list of hazardous chemicals.”
Wildfire smoke can cause immediate health effects, such as heart attacks, strokes and bronchitis, especially in people who are more vulnerable to breathing problems and can threat to pregnant women. “These single exposure events can be really devastating for people with pre-existing conditions,” said Shahir Masri, an air pollution scientist at the University of California, Irvine.
Exposure to this type of pollution can also weaken the immune system. one year 2021 learn found that Covid-19 infections and deaths in California, Oregon and Washington last year were exacerbated by increased fine particulate air pollution from wildfire smoke. “Whether it’s Covid or any other virus, this is the time to avoid more than just exposure to exposure,” said Francesca Dominici, professor of biostatistics, population and data science at Harvard. outdoor fine substances but also really trying not to get sick.” TH Chan School of Public Health, who carried out the study. “Your ability to fight viruses is less effective.”
Flannigan said this year’s wildfire season in Canada is “unprecedented” and could break records. Hundreds of fires have burned in Canada—some lasting days or weeks—often started by human activity or thunder, followed by dry vegetation and made worse by the weather is hot, dry and windy. Warm air rising over land lifted the smoke from 5,000 feet to 20,000 feet, where the haze rapidly moved south and east in strong winds.
