Wildfire Smoke Chokes Canada and U.S., Triggering Air Quality Alerts
Federal officials have issued air quality warnings across large swaths of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and western Ontario, where most of the uncontrolled fires are concentrated. Many cities across this region are suffering from 'high risk' or 'very high risk' air quality conditions that may persist through the end of the week, according to Environment Canada. In the U.S., the National Weather Service (NWS) has issued air quality alerts across the Midwest and Northeast. Several alerts cover entire states, including New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
The Switzerland-based air quality monitoring database IQAir—which provides real-time air quality data—listed Minneapolis, Minnesota, as having some of the worst air pollution in the world over the weekend, the Associated Press reported. 'We've sort of been dealing with this, day in and day out, where you walk outside and you can taste the smoke, you can smell it,' Joe Strus, a meteorologist at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul NWS office, told the AP.
Air quality alerts indicate that air is unhealthy for sensitive groups, including people with asthma, lung or heart disease, children, and older adults. That said, wildfire smoke can affect anyone's health, regardless of their age or preexisting conditions. Even in healthy people, inhaling fine particulate matter—the primary pollutant of concern in wildfire smoke—can temporarily reduce lung function, trigger pulmonary inflammation, and induce respiratory symptoms such as coughing and wheezing, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The NWS advised those under alerts to reduce their smoke exposure by limiting time outdoors.
It doesn't appear that this public health hazard will dissipate anytime soon. Canada is currently experiencing one of its worst wildfire seasons on record, second only to 2023, when more than 6,000 fires torched roughly 37 million acres (15 million hectares) of land, according to Natural Resources Canada. So far this year, more than 4,000 fires have ravaged over 16.5 million acres (6.7 million hectares), CIFFC reports.
In an update posted Monday, August 4, the agency stated that lightning strikes in Ontario and Alberta are igniting, or threatening to ignite, new fires. On Tuesday, August 5, eight more sparked to life, according to CIFFC. As Canada struggles to contain hundreds of out-of-control fires, the near-constant emergence of new blazes has taxed Canada's firefighting forces on a national scale.
This situation 'is not unlike what we've been seeing in the last few years,' Monica Vaswani, a warning preparedness meteorologist at Environment Canada, told The Guardian. 'Unfortunately it's kind of becoming a little bit more the norm,' she said.
The reason why comes down to rising global temperatures. 'Climate change is greatly increasing the flammability of the fuel available for wildfires because the trees, fallen trees, and underbrush are all so dry,' Yan Boulanger, research scientist in forest ecology at Natural Resources Canada, said in 2024. 'This means that a single spark, regardless of its source, can rapidly turn into a blazing inferno.'
Experts have warned that Canada's 2025 season is already on track to rival 2023. As the planet warms, intensifying wildfire seasons will continue to smash records not just in Canada, but around the world. The only way to truly extinguish this ongoing crisis is to eliminate the fuel: greenhouse gas emissions.
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