As of Monday morning, nearly five thousand wildfires have burned 30.4 million acres in Canada since the beginning of 2023.
Smoke from those wildfires has drifted to the eastern United States, including here in Central Pennsylvania and resulted in poor and unhealthy air quality days in June and July.
In fact, researchers at Rutgers University found the smoke was at levels not seen since smoking was banned indoors 15 years ago.
JPB Fellow José Cedeño Laurent, Assistant Professor, Rutgers School of Public Health, Director, Rutgers CARE Lab, Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute said on The Spark Monday that at the height of the smoky conditions in early June, the small particle pollution was well above what’s healthy, “For a 24 hour period, you have to be below 35 micrograms per cubic meter. So this is the amount of particulates of a certain size that are present in the air. What we measured that day at the peak of the event on June 7th was around 330. So almost ten times that amount…300 micrograms per cubic meter number. So those were similar concentrations of what you would experience in one of those bars” (before indoor smoke bans). Find here the full interview.