JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Smoke from Canadian wildfires is affecting air quality in the Midwest and the northeast. NPR's Alejandra Borunda joins us now to talk about the health risks from smoke and what you can do to protect yourself. Hi there.
ALEJANDRA BORUNDA, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So, Alejandra, a lot of people have been waking up this week to some pretty unpleasant air. What's the current situation with the smoke?
BORUNDA: Yeah, so a lot of the smoke is coming from wildfires far away in Canada. And the wind patterns right now are taking it over the Great Lakes and a lot of the northeast. There's also fires burning in California and in Arizona around the Grand Canyon and in the northwest. So there's just a lot of smoke everywhere right now.
SUMMERS: Right. And when it's smoky, that typically means that the air quality index, or AQI, rises. What does that tell us?
BORUNDA: Yeah, so the AQI incorporates several different kinds of pollution, including fine particles, which are one of the main components of wildfire smoke. Experts say it's not a perfect measure of smoke risk by any stretch, but it gives us a pretty good sense of how bad the air is. And in general, numbers under 50 are usually considered OK. Above that, the risks start going up, particularly for sensitive people, like older people or children or those with respiratory conditions. I start being really careful around 100. And then when you start seeing numbers like 150 or higher, which is what's happening in the Midwest and upstate New York right now, that's considered unhealthy for pretty much everyone.
SUMMERS: Right. Got it. OK, so all the smoke, what does it mean for our health?
BORUNDA: You know, smoke is not good for us, full stop.
NICHOLAS NASSIKAS: Breathing bad stuff, bad air, is bad for the body.
BORUNDA: That's Nicholas Nassikas. He's a pulmonologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. And he coauthored a study in Nature Communications that found 15,000 people died from climate-worsened wildfire smoke between 2006 and 2020. The idea basically goes like this. Climate change makes wildfires worse, which makes smoke heavier, which leads to more deaths. And smoke hasn't ever been listed as an official cause of death for anyone in the U.S. But the number, to me, shows it's a big deal.
SUMMERS: Yeah, I mean, 15,000 people is quite a bit.
BORUNDA: Yeah. And I want to be clear, too. Smoke doesn't have to kill us to be bad for our health. So these little, tiny toxic smoke particles can get really deep into the lungs and from there into the bloodstream, where they drive inflammation, which exacerbates a lot of health issues from asthma to heart disease and even brain problems. And there's some growing concern now that smoke that's traveled a long way, like from northern Canada, could be extra bad. Erin Landguth studies population health at the University of Montana, and she notes that wildfire smoke is mostly made up of burned carbon.
ERIN LANDGUTH: Because it's 70% carbon, roughly, there's more potential for it to oxidize.
BORUNDA: And you might've heard that term before, oxidation. And it can create more free radicals, which can be extra damaging inside the body.
SUMMERS: OK, help us out here. What can people do to protect themselves?
BORUNDA: So the thing, No. 1, is check your air quality. You can do that on your weather app or at airnow.gov or via something like PurpleAir. I check it every morning. Carlos Gould is an environmental health scientist at the University of California San Diego. He says, it's important to take care, even when the sky isn't, like, scary orange that we've seen before.
CARLOS GOULD: When the wildfire smoke is below a level at which we can smell it or see it, we may not take action.
BORUNDA: Like staying inside in filtered air, for example. And Gould says breathing air at these levels, which are well into the unhealthy zone now, that can have health consequences. So overall, he says limit your time outside. Maybe you wear an 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, this is something I think about a lot with as much time as I spend outside. It really seems like this is a reality we're all going to be living with now for a while.
BORUNDA: Oh, yeah. I think about it, too. And unfortunately, I think it is.
SUMMERS: That's NPR's Alejandra Borunda. Thank you so much.
BORUNDA: Yeah, it was great to talk.
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