Canada Wildfire: High-risk Air Quality Threatens Health of Millions in US

Wed Jun 07 2023
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TORONTO: High-risk air quality warnings have been issued for millions of people across North America due to ongoing wildfires in Canada.

Wildfire smoke has blanketed major cities in Ontario and Quebec, including Toronto and its surrounding areas. The smoke has reached as far as New York City and Connecticut, where air quality has been classified as “unhealthy”.

Much of the smoke is coming from Quebec, where 160 fires are burning. Environment Canada issued its strongest warning Tuesday for Ottawa, deeming the air quality in the Canadian capital a “very high risk” to people’s health. In Toronto and its surrounding areas, the air quality has been classified as “high risk”.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has classified the air quality in much of the northeastern United States as “unhealthy”, especially for citizens who already had respiratory problems.

Air quality advisories include much of New York City and Connecticut. They stretch as far north as Boston and as far south as Pittsburgh and Washington DC. Parts of eastern Pennsylvania, New York and New England have seen their Air Quality Index top 200, meaning situations that are “very unhealthy for everyone”.

In New York, pictures taken on Tuesday showed an orange haze blanketing the city’s skyline due to the wildfire smoke from Canada that has travelled south. Public health officials have cautioned citizens not to daily exercise outside and to minimise their exposure to the smoke as much as possible, as the air poses immediate and long-term health risks.

Deteriorating air quality has forced at least one region in Quebec – the Atikamekw community of Opitciwan, 350km north of Montreal – to transfer people with asthma and other respiratory problems away from the smoke.

Canada continues to see a more active wildfire season than normal. Federal officials cautioned on Monday that this summer may bring Canada’s largest fires yet because of dry and hot conditions that are forecast for much of the season. Fires across the country have already burned more than 3.3m hectares of land – a location 12 times the 10-year average for this time of year.

Thousands of citizens have been evacuated across the country, including in Quebec, where fires have burned around 200,000 hectares to date. Main fires have also been burning in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Nova Scotia and the Northwest Territories.

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