Smoke from Canada wildfires poses a health risk to millions of people
Due to persistent Canada wildfires, high-risk air quality alerts have been issued for millions in North America.
Wildfire smoke has covered major cities in Ontario and Quebec, including Toronto and its surrounding regions.
Canada wildfires smoke is a severe threat to all North Americans:
The smoke has reached New York City and Connecticut, where air quality has been categorised as “harmful”. Much of the smoke arrives from Quebec, where 160 fires are burning.
Environment Canada gave its most robust notice on Tuesday for Ottawa, considering the air quality in the Canadian city a “very high risk” to citizens’ health.
In Toronto and its surrounding regions, the air quality has been considered a “high risk”.
Meanwhile, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has categorised the air quality in much of the north-eastern US as “harmful”, specifically for people with respiratory problems.
Air quality advisories have much of New York City and Connecticut. They even stretch as far north as Boston and south as Pittsburgh and Washington, DC.
Areas of eastern Pennsylvania, New York and New England have seen their Air Quality Index top 200, meaning states that are “very harmful for everyone”.
In New York, pictures taken on Tuesday morning showed orange smoke covering the city’s skyline due to the wildfire haze from Canada that has reached south.
Public health officers have warned people not to exercise outdoors and to minimise their vulnerability to the haze as much as possible, as the air poses immediate and long-term health threats.
Worsening air quality has even forced at least one area in Quebec – the Atikamekw community of Opitciwan, 350km (217 miles) north of Montreal – to move people with asthma and other respiratory problems away from the haze.
Canada continues to witness a more active wildfire year than usual. Federal officers warned on Monday that this summer might get Canada’s largest fires because of dry and hot conditions predicted for much of the season.
