PSA: The Air is Bad
Explaining why you should stfi (stay the fuck inside) and getting into some fun history, I guess
You probably already know that the air is simply atrocious in most of North America today. I’ve encountered a lot of folks who are bewildered or apathetic about this over the past 12 hours or so, and I think that’s understandable. The existential nausea of the air being poisonous is kind of hard to wrap your head around and respond to logically, especially if you’re not used to living in or visiting a place that habitually has the kind of air quality the East Coast has right now.
I’m going to explain what’s going on and why you should care (peppered with a few fun historical facts, natch) in the hopes of arming you with the knowledge and intrigue required to safely navigate this particular aspect of the climate crisis. But first I’m going to tell you why I’m bothering to do so, other than the fact that last night I saw more people maskless than masked while huffing literal smog.
As you probably know by now, I’ve got a ~fragile constitution~ these days. But generally speaking I’ve been doing pretty well! I’m getting back into weight lifting with the help of a flippin’ boss of a personal trainer (she spends most of her time sternly telling me to sit down before I pass out), I’m managing my brain fog well enough that I just committed to ghostwriting a book for the first time (no, I can’t tell you about it!), and I’ve accepted that caffeine just shuts my body down now (fun).
Yesterday I spent about 30 minutes total walking outside to get from one location to another. I wore a good mask the entire time. Today, I’m having one of the worst symptom flare-ups I’ve had in months. This is a cancel-all-the-calls-you-can kind of symptom day. This is a write-a-newsletter-from-bed kind of day. And yeah, sure, my chronic illness is basically an arcane curse and it can get triggered by any ol’ fuss. But I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what can cause a day this bad, and none of those things happened yesterday.
Please let my sensitive little immune system be the canary in your coal mine. The air! It’s bad! Your body doesn’t like it. You can see exactly how bad your own personal air is here.
Okay. As promised, let’s get into why.
On Wednesday, Canada was fighting about 600 wildfires, some 250 of them officially deemed “out of control.”
Wildfire smoke rises higher in more powerful blazes, with some forming towering clouds that inject smoke into the stratosphere. The higher the smoke goes, the farther it can travel on the wind. Smoke particles can end up thousands of miles away from the fire that produced them.
Wood smoke contains Particulate matter particles less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter, also known as fine particles or PM2.5. Those microscopic solids and liquid droplets are small enough to make it into your bloodstream. They aggravate conditions like asthma and heart disease and can cause cognitive issues. At levels like the ones we’re experiencing right now, even healthy people can experience sinus trouble and allergy-esque discomfort. Plus, there’s evidence that cumulative exposure worsens your risk of various really bad things.
Wildfire smoke is particularly dangerous, though, because it’s not just wood. A wildfire also burns down houses, which contain all sorts of plastics and potentially dangerous chemicals and things like paint and metal and polyester that, while fine when they’re on your walls or in your cupboard or adorning your body, are not very chill to inhale.
This is not going to be a one-time thing. Canada is firmly on track for its worst wildfire season on record. The real wildfire season doesn’t even start until July, and more of the country has already burned than most years in recent memory. And other spots are going to spew smoke at us, too. We’re seeing an unprecedented risk of “dry thunderstorms” in Pennsylvania and New Jersey at the moment. California is set to have an “average” fire season this year (yippee), but only because the wet winter and a shift in atmospheric patterns are making it so the state should have a very much below-average fire season. It’s time to buy an air purifier if you don’t already have one and start keeping respirators around for outdoor use.
Back when humans thought that “bad air”or miasma caused most disease, the public was quite wise to the fact that a heavy fog could really knock you out. Folks blamed cholera outbreaks on the air itself, equating the stink of poor sanitation with some signal that illness was traveling on the wind. They were so hilariously close to figuring that shit out. Unfortunately, they mostly responded by trying to find stuff stinkier than the air to inhale instead, which they figured would beat out the dangerous vapors with the power of their stench. I hope I don’t need to say this, but trying to block out the smell of Canadian char with candles, perfumes, or weed is just going to give your lungs an even harder time.
Rachel’s Recs:
Listen to: The latest episode of The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week, which features best-selling romance writer Ali Hazelwood! How fun!
Buy: Some audiobook credits that support your local indie bookstore!
Watch: Silo, so I have more people to talk about it with!
I live west of Ottawa and north of Kingston, Ontario. Last year was the first time I saw smoky skies and had air quality alerts. That was a couple of days in late August. Here we're in June and it's already been 3 days and tomorrow is supposed to be worse. Yesterday despite being broke, I went and bought an air purifier. What's crazy is I see so many people out and about without masks. We're Canada, we are the most educated country in the world this is crazy that people aren't using their brains. We have the masks from COVID, use them. One "good" thing though, is the Canadian forest fires really are mostly just wood char. Canada has a population of 38 million, 90% of which lives within 100 miles from the US boarder, meaning that northern Canada was mostly vast swaths of untouched land. It's not like California's regularly scheduled fires, there because of red lining and zoning laws, the housing isn't build at a reasonable density, forcing people to spread out, ie into the fire belt (seriously, was there any forethought into that? And when are the insurance companies going to just straight up refuse to cover any structures almost guaranteed to burn down in the next fire). Fires are a natural and traditional part of the Californian ecosystem, but that is not the case for Ontario Canada, we are supposed to be hot and humid in the summer, and cold and dry in the winter. Every year has been getting stranger, from droughts, to fires and mild nasty winters, it's terrifying. Yet my family doesn't even believe in climate change, they don't believe humans have the ability to affect the world they say the world is always changing. Just straight up madness. Anyway I hope for the sakes of you and everyone like you, myself and my neighbors, the animals, plants and bugs, that this is over soon and the rest of the summer is back to our regular programming.