First Knozone Action Day of 2025: Outside air will be bad June 12. What you should know
The first Knozone Action Day has been issued for June 12, 2025.
Hot temperatures, sunny skies, and light winds will lead to conditions suitable for ozone development when combined with wildfire smoke and other emission sources. Due to a high ground-level ozone forecast, the air quality outside will be deemed unhealthy for sensitive groups.
The Indianapolis Office of Sustainability said people in Central Indiana with asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary (COPD) disease, and other similar diagnoses should avoid time spent outdoors on June 12. Unhealthy air quality impacts public health and environmental justice as vulnerable groups, including children, older adults, pregnant people, outdoor laborers, and anyone suffering from asthma, COPD, emphysema, heart disease, or other conditions, are at greater risk, according to the office.
Nearly 1 in 5 Marion County residents is at greater risk for severe symptoms due to unhealthy air quality.
People can sign up at smogwatch.in.gov to be notified of unhealthy air days early.
Knozone.com and the Environmental Protection Agency's AirNow website and mobile app are other resources for monitoring local air.
This time last year: Stay inside, Knozone Action Day extended due to high temperatures
Knozone Action Days happen when levels of certain pollutants rise above acceptable thresholds. During Knozone Action Days, the air quality may become unhealthy for sensitive individuals due to increased ground-level ozone and/or fine particles, which are two of the most common pollutants in the United States.While the ozone layer high in the atmosphere helps protect us from the sun's rays, ozone down where we breathe is dangerous for public health, according to the Office of Sustainability.
Ground-level ozone is created when a chemical reaction occurs between sunlight and hydrocarbons from emission sources common in urban areas, like gas-powered vehicles and lawn mowers.
Fine particulate matter (or PM2.5) refers to microscopic particles in the air, including dust and smoke, that we can inhale into our lungs and cause damage. This can even be caused by wildfires or dust clouds blowing from thousands of miles away.
Residents are encouraged to reduce their contribution toground-level ozone by:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Stanford Health join forces with Kivo Health for AI-driven pulmonary rehab
Academic medical centre Stanford Health Care has announced a collaboration with Kivo Health to enhance AI-driven virtual pulmonary rehabilitation for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients. Pulmonary rehabilitation, a critical component of COPD management, leads to reduced hospitalisations by up to 56%. However, access remains limited, with less than 3% of eligible patients receiving this vital treatment. The partnership with Kivo Health aims to enable several patients to complete pulmonary rehabilitation from home, thus enhancing COPD outcomes. Kivo Health CEO Victor Sadauskas said: 'This collaboration reflects a bold commitment to evidence-based innovation, health equity, and value-based care. 'Together, we are transforming how COPD is managed—expanding access, improving outcomes, and dramatically reducing avoidable hospitalisations for one of the most underserved, highest-cost chronic conditions in the US.' Stanford Health Care is a component of Stanford Medicine, which encompasses the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Health Care, and Stanford Children's Health, including Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. Stanford Health Care Digital Health senior director Leah Rosengaus said: "We are thrilled to collaborate with Kivo Health to bring virtual pulmonary rehabilitation to our COPD patients. "We are dedicated to enhancing access to care, and believe innovative solutions like virtual pulmonary rehabilitation provide patients with new channels to connect to services, and support healing in the comfort of home.' Stanford Health Care delivers clinical innovation across its speciality health centres, inpatient services, physician offices, virtual care offerings as well as health plan programmes. In April 2021, Stanford Health Care selected Experience Management (XM) provider Qualtrics to overhaul its patient experience programme. "Stanford Health join forces with Kivo Health for AI-driven pulmonary rehab" was originally created and published by Hospital Management, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
Time Magazine
8 hours ago
- Time Magazine
Can Air Conditioning Make You Sick?
At the height of the tuberculosis epidemic in the 19th century, doctors began advising people to venture outside to escape the ' bad air ' in their homes. In the 1960s, by contrast, AC became widespread in the U.S., increasing the appeal of staying inside. These days, many of us—the so-called ' indoor generation '—spend summer mostly inside, relying on AC to beat the heat. This technology saves lives; our sealed, climate-controlled spaces keep us healthy during dangerous heat waves. AC also helps many people avoid pollution outside. But did the 19th century physicians have a point about the downsides of stale indoor air? It depends. 'Multiple studies show that spending too much time in air-conditioned rooms can lead to more respiratory symptoms,' says Dr. William Checkley, a pulmonary and critical care physician and professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Here are the benefits, risks, and simple ways to make AC healthier this summer. The many benefits of AC AC is key to getting through summertime without a heat-related illness—or worse. 'The statistics on deaths from extreme heat are shocking, especially for the elderly and immunocompromised,' says Jeffrey Siegel, professor of civil engineering at the University of Toronto. From 1999 to 2023, heat-related deaths in the U.S. doubled. AC's benefits go beyond its cooling effect. A well-working AC system filters the air to reduce intake of dust, pollen, and airborne pathogens, Checkley says. AC is also critical in areas with pollution. Its filters can cleanse the air of particulate matter 2.5, a toxin shed in vehicle exhaust, industrial activity, and wildfires. Research shows that PM2.5 enters homes and contributes to heart and lung disease—but these effects aren't as severe in places with more AC use. 'Every time the AC system operates, it's pulling some particles out of the air,' says Brent Stephens, professor of civil, architectural, and environmental engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology. Cranking up the AC also makes the air less humid, reducing the dampness that contributes to bacterial growth, mold, and dust mites, which can contribute to—or, in rare cases, even cause—conditions like pneumonia, asthma, and COPD. Too much of a good thing Now, some big caveats. If you overdo it with AC, the air becomes too dry. If you're inhaling a lot of dry air, the human body adds water vapor to the inhaled air to maintain your internal humidity level, Checkley says. When you exhale, that moist air leaves your body with every breath. Ultimately, this dries out your respiratory tract, Checkley explains. The airways become irritated and inflamed, causing coughs, sore throat, and nasal congestion—a condition known as ' sick building syndrome.' Another consequence of air that's too dry: the lungs' natural defenses to microbes weaken, increasing susceptibility to disease, especially among kids and the immunocompromised. Viruses may be more likely to circulate in drier conditions. Think of how often people get sick right after long trips inside a dry airplane. It's the same effect in people's homes or offices. This may seem like a no-win situation: dampness leads to mold and dustmites, and dryness leads to cold-like symptoms and disease. However, there's a sweet spot. 'The ideal humidity in a home is between 40% and 60%,' Checkley says. Bacteria and viruses thrive both below and above these thresholds. 'There are indoor air conditions we can't perceive, which can be good or bad for us—it's not all about comfort,' says Dr. Stephanie Taylor, a clinician and consultant on healthy indoor environments. So how do you keep your home in the optimal humidity zone? Checkley advises buying a thermostat with a humidity sensor, called a hygrometer, to track the level. Many are inexpensive yet accurate. If humidity drops below 40%, give the AC a rest. If humidity tops 60%, crank it back up. Maintain your unit The AC may also pose health risks if it's working sub-optimally, even if it's not outright broken. 'What really matters is the condition of your air conditioning,' Siegel says. Much of this comes down to homeowner fundamentals like remembering to change your AC filter. With an old dirty filter, the AC coil and ducts could become 'cesspools of mold, bacteria, and allergens,' Taylor explains—which tag along with the AC's airflow. Slide in new filters every 1-2 months during peak AC use. The cost of additional filters is worth keeping up your home's air quality, Checkley says. Look for filters with minimum efficiency reporting value (MERV) ratings of 11 or 13. They're effective at trapping dust, mold, and other particles. In addition, calendar a yearly visit from an HVAC specialist. 'People think of AC as this magic black box that makes cold,' Siegel says. 'We only think about servicing it when it's not making cold anymore.' Even if the cold magic still works, a specialist should occasionally inspect the coil and ducts to ensure they're clean. In addition to regular assessments, get one after any major leak or other moisture problem, which can result in a dirty coil, Siegel adds. You can also install a UV light in your AC system. This device emits radiation that damages the cells of microorganisms like bacteria and mold—keeping the coil and interior components clean. Quality varies; make sure to work with a reputable manufacturer and contractor, and choose a light with a safety certification from UL or ETL, two independent organizations that test and certify products like lights for safety. Lights without these certifications may generate harmful byproducts, Taylor notes. Proper AC maintenance will also amplify AC's benefits, like thinning out PM2.5 from the air. 'With a decent filter, you reduce exposure to a ton of things we know have very serious health effects,' Siegel says. For a window AC, don't move it straight from the closet to the window when summer starts. 'Open it up and clean it first,' Taylor says. Use air purifiers Although your AC can—if it's working on all cylinders—clean PM2.5 pollution from outdoor sources, it does not clean another type of toxin that originates inside the home: volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. If the AC is on constantly, and you rarely open windows, your air may be rife with these chemicals. Potentially harmful VOCs are emitted by many home products such as furniture, cleaning supplies, and air fresheners. They've been linked to headaches, throat irritation, hormone disruption and, with long-term exposure, chronic diseases. VOCs play a role in what experts increasingly view as a building's microbiome, Taylor says. Indoor spaces, just like the human body, harbor communities of bacteria, fungi, and other microbes. With optimal humidity and AC maintenance, your indoor microbiome supports healthier, more diverse microbes. But VOCs can suppress or kill these microbes and promote the growth of pathogenic strains and imbalanced communities. Counter toxic VOCs by occasionally turning off the AC and opening windows. Indoor air has 2 to 5 times more VOCs than outdoor air, Stephens says. Another strategy: buy a portable HEPA air purifier. The best versions have carbon filters with porous surfaces that trap the gas molecules of VOCs, taking them out of the air. Purifiers also help remove about 50% of PM2.5. Stephens has one purifier on each level of his townhome. He keeps the purifiers' fan speeds on low or medium constantly to filter the air without having to think about it—but changes the speed to high when there's pollution, such as during rush hour when PM2.5 comes from outside, or when he's cleaning with chemicals that produce VOCs inside. VOC levels may be higher if your home is tightly sealed, trapping the chemicals inside. 'Every home is an absolute unicorn,' Stephens says. A professional air sampling measures VOCs. A number of VOC monitors are also available for people to buy, but Stephens says these consumer-grade devices can't detect levels of specific VOCs, so they won't tell you the potential toxicity or health risk. However, he adds that low-cost monitors for particles like PM2.5 have become much more accurate in recent years. An even less expensive, relatively simple humidity monitor combined with good AC maintenance will help ensure that you stay both cool and healthy this summer.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
How poisonous mercury can get from coal-fired power plants into the fish you eat – Trump's EPA plans to weaken emissions rules meant to lower the risk
People fishing along the banks of the White River as it winds through Indianapolis sometimes pass by ominous signs warning about eating the fish they catch. One of the risks they have faced is mercury poisoning. Mercury is a neurotoxic metal that can cause irreparable harm to human health – especially the brain development of young children. It is tied to lower IQ and results in decreased earning potential, as well as higher health costs. Lost productivity from mercury alone was calculated in 2005 to reach almost US$9 billion per year. One way mercury gets into river fish is with the gases that rise up the smokestacks of coal-burning power plants. The Environmental Protection Agency established a rule in 2012 limiting mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants in an effort to improve air quality and public health. The first Trump administration moved to weaken the rule in 2020, arguing that the costs to industry outweighed the health benefit to the public. Then, the Biden administration tightened the regulations a few years later. Now, the Trump administration is proposing to weaken the latest regulations and, in addition, to repeal Biden-era limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, moves it hopes will boost coal power production. I study mercury and its sources as a biogeochemist at Indiana University. Before the EPA's original mercury rule went into effect, my students and I launched a project to track how Indianapolis-area power plants were increasing mercury in the rivers and soil. The risks from eating a fish from a river downwind from a coal-burning power plant depends on both the type of fish caught and the age and condition of the person consuming it. Mercury is a bioaccumulative toxin, meaning that it increasingly concentrates in the flesh of organisms as it makes its way up the food chain. The mercury emitted from coal-burning power plants falls onto soils and washes into waterways. There, the moderately benign mercury is transformed by bacteria into a toxic organic form called methylmercury. Each bacterium might contain only one unit of toxic methylmercury, but a worm chewing through sediment and eating 1,000 of those bacteria now contains 1,000 doses of mercury. The catfish that eats the worm then get more doses, and so on up the food chain to humans. In this way, top-level predator fishes, such as smallmouth bass, walleye, largemouth bass, lake trout and Northern pike, typically contain the highest amounts of mercury in aquatic ecosystems. On average, one of these fish contains enough to make eating only one serving of them per month dangerous for the developing fetuses of pregnant women and for children. In our study, we wanted to answer a simple question: Did the local coal-burning power plants, known to be major emitters of toxic mercury, have an impact on the local environment? The obvious answer seems to be yes, they do. But in fact, quite a bit of research – and coal industry advertising – noted that mercury is a 'global pollutant' and could not necessarily be traced to a local source. A recurring argument is that mercury deposited on the landscape came from coal-burning power plants in China, so why regulate local emissions if others were still burning coal? That justification was based on the unique chemistry of this element. It is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature, and when heated just to a moderate level, will evaporate into mercury vapor. Thus, when coal is burned in a power plant, the mercury that is present in it is released through the smokestacks as a gas and dilutes as it travels. Low levels of mercury also occur naturally. Although this argument was technically true, we found it obscured the bigger picture. We found the overwhelming source of mercury was within sight of the White River fishermen – a large coal-burning power plant on the edge of the city. This power plant emitted vaporous mercury at the time, though it has since switched to natural gas. We found that much of the plant's mercury rapidly reacted with other atmospheric constituents and water vapor to 'wash out' over the city. It was raining down mercury on the landscape. Mercury emitted from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants can fall from the atmosphere with rain, mist or chemical reactions. Several studies have shown elevated levels of mercury in soils and plants near power plants, with much of the mercury falling within about 9 miles (15 kilometers) of the smokestack. When we surveyed hundreds of surface soils ranging from about 1 to 31 miles (2 to 50 km) from the coal-fired power plant, then the single largest emitter of mercury in central Indiana, we were shocked. We found a clear 'plume' of elevated mercury in Indianapolis, with much higher values near the power plant tailing off to almost background values 31 miles downwind. The White River flows from the northeast to the southwest through Indianapolis, opposite the wind patterns. When we sampled sediments from most of its course through central Indiana, we found that mercury levels started low well upstream of Indianapolis, but increased substantially as the river flowed through downtown, apparently accumulating deposited mercury along its flow path. We also found high levels well downstream of the city. Thus a fisherman out in the countryside, far away from the city, was still at significant risk of catching, and eating, high-mercury fish. As of 2022, in Indianapolis, pregnant women were still advised to avoid eating some fish from the White River altogether. The EPA created the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule, or MATS, to deal with the exact health risk Indianapolis was facing. The original rule stipulated that mercury sources had to be sharply reduced. For coal-fired power plants, this meant either installing costly mercury-capturing filters in the smokestacks or converting to another energy source. Many converted to natural gas, which reduces the mercury risk but still contributes to health problems and global warming. The MATS rule succeeded in reducing mercury emissions from power plants. It also helped tilt the national energy playing field away from coal. In 2020, the Trump Administration, in an attempt to bolster the declining U.S. coal industry, rescinded a 'supplemental finding' that it is 'appropriate and necessary' to regulate mercury from power plants. In 2022, the Biden Administration moved to reaffirm that supplemental finding, and it followed with stronger regulations in 2024. Now, the Trump administration is planning to pull back again. The new EPA proposal will go through a comment period, which will take time, but it sends a signal to the industry. Environmental groups expect to challenge the moves in court. Some economists initially calculated the net cost of the MATS rule to the U.S. electricity sector to be about $9.6 billion per year. This is roughly equal to estimates of productivity loss alone from the harm mercury emissions cause. The overall benefits of the rule were estimated to be higher. To a public health expert, this math problem is a no-brainer. Protecting the health of generations of Americans today and in the future matters. This is an update to an article originally published Feb. 15, 2022. This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Gabriel Filippelli, Indiana University Read more: The US is making plans to replace all of its lead water pipes from coast to coast Gold rush, mercury legacy: Small-scale mining for gold has produced long-lasting toxic pollution, from 1860s California to modern Peru The risk of preterm birth rises near gas flaring, reflecting deep-rooted environmental injustices in rural America Gabriel Filippelli does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
