East Coasters, national media discover the poisonous, gloomy affliction of wildfire smoke

As pret­ty much any res­i­dent of the west­ern Unit­ed States and Cana­da can attest, one of the worst things about wild­fires is the smoke. It’s gloomy, poi­so­nous, and down­right icky. It jeop­ar­dizes a lot of sim­ple joys, from open­ing a win­dow to let in fresh air, going for a long walk, play­ing in the foun­tain at the park, or attend­ing an event such as a out­doors con­cert or base­ball game.

For much of the past decade, cities in the Pacif­ic and Moun­tain time­zones have put up with an increas­ing amount of tox­ic, night­mar­ish, smoky weather.

We’ve watched as some of our best weath­er weeks, espe­cial­ly in late sum­mer or ear­ly fall, have been effec­tive­ly lost to smoke ema­nat­ing from mas­sive wild­fires burn­ing through the forests and grass­lands of the West.

We’ve cur­tailed our out­door activ­i­ties and filled our homes with air puri­fiers. We’ve learned how to mea­sure air qual­i­ty and inter­pret smoke fore­casts. We’ve begged our elect­ed offi­cials to raise more resources in to address cli­mate cri­sis and com­bat wild­fires that get dead­lier and more destruc­tive every year.

East Coast­ers have in the past large­ly been spared from these mis­er­able expe­ri­ences. Nation­al media have occa­sion­al­ly report­ed on what’s hap­pen­ing out West, but it has­n’t per­vad­ed the pub­lic con­scious­ness of soci­ety on the oth­er coast in the way that it has here. At least, not until this week, when nasty, tox­ic smoke from wild­fires burn­ing in Cana­da arrived in the Mid-Atlantic region, send­ing air qual­i­ty in cities like Philadel­phia and New York to dan­ger­ous­ly low levels.

“The smoke from wild­fires hun­dreds of miles north that turned New York into a scene of unset­tling gloom on Wednes­day arrived as if from a burn­ing build­ing blocks away, drap­ing the city in a thick and oth­er­world­ly orange-gray hue,” wrote The New York Times’ Michael Wil­son, assess­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic scene.

“In the air hung the acrid smell of a camp­fire. Not fog, not mist, not real­ly weath­er at all — this was some­thing new to even vet­er­an New Yorkers.”

“Auto­mo­bile head­lights flipped on mid­day, as dri­vers strug­gled to see. Street­lights lit auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Busy sum­mer­time side­walks, their noon­time shad­ows blurred out, grad­u­al­ly emp­tied. A woman leav­ing a gro­cery store stopped and point­ed her phone’s cam­era toward the blot­ted-out sky.”

“May­or Eric Adams, at a news con­fer­ence, gave voice to the way many New York­ers like­ly felt when they stepped out­side: ‘What the hell is this?’ ”

Wel­come to our world, East Coast­ers. Wel­come to our world.

This is what we’ve been suf­fer­ing with on about a semi­an­nu­al basis for sev­er­al years now. We empathize with your predica­ment. We’ve been there, way too many times. It sucks. The smoke is not only bad for your phys­i­cal health, it also takes a neg­a­tive toll on your men­tal and emo­tion­al health as well.

Know that it will pass, even­tu­al­ly. You’ll see clear­er skies again and breathe clean­er air. But you’re going to have to get through an unpleas­ant stretch first.

“Zero shade for the New York­ers deal­ing with this — it’s awful — but it’s wild to see the way East Coast media is sud­den­ly doing wall-to-wall cov­er­age of some­thing that’s been real­i­ty on the West Coast for a decade,” not­ed Rachel Alexan­der.

“Get­ting texts and DMs from friends and reporters like: so sor­ry we did­n’t real­ize how bad the fires were for you guys these past 5 years,” tweet­ed Clara Jef­frey.

“My fam­i­ly out west is com­pas­sion­ate but absolute­ly notices how dif­fer­ent the wild­fire smoke is being cov­ered today now that it has hit NY/DC than it is every eff­ing year back home,” tweet­ed Sarah Mimms, a deputy edi­tor for NBC.

Yep. That’s East Coast media bias for you.

Here’s some advice from west­ern­ers on man­ag­ing the smoke:

• Avoid exer­cis­ing out­doors. Go to the gym instead, or do exer­cis­es at home. Breath­ing that tox­ic air is real­ly bad for you!
• Down­load the IQAir app for your mobile device so you can track con­di­tions in your area. You can also use their web­site. For exam­ple, here’s the page for New York City, which right now has the world’s worst air qual­i­ty.
• If you haven’t invest­ed in an air puri­fi­er with a HEPA fil­ter for your home, now would be a real­ly good time to do so. The NPI team rec­om­mends the Cow­ay Mighty or Cow­ay Airmega; you can get it from trust­ed ven­dors like Syl­vane. Wire­cut­ter has con­sis­tent­ly found Cow­ay’s prod­ucts to be more effec­tive than the competition’s.
• You should also stock up on masks with effec­tive fil­tra­tion and wear them for when you do go out. They offer pro­tec­tion against dis­eases like COVID as well as smoke. You can get made in the USA N95s from com­pa­nies like Deme­Tech. If you want a more advanced mask that’s wash­able and reusable, try the Hap­py Mask Ultra series, which our staff use.
• If you live in an old­er build­ing, try apply­ing painter’s tape to doors and win­dows that are not well sealed. It’s remov­able and should come off clean­ly lat­er. This will help you get more ben­e­fit from your air purifier.

More advice here.

“Cana­da could exceed the largest total amount of burned area record­ed in this coun­try in a sin­gle year,” The Cana­di­an Press report­ed.

“Nat­ur­al Resources Cana­da released updat­ed data and fore­casts Mon­day show­ing that, as of June 4, there had been 2,214 wild­fires across Cana­da this year, and about 3.3 mil­lion hectares burned. The ten-year aver­age over the same time­frame is 1,624 fires and 254,429 hectares burned.”

“The depart­ment said it is unusu­al to have blazes across most of the coun­try this ear­ly in the wild­fire sea­son, and that Cana­da could pass the annu­al record for burned area if the cur­rent rate of fire activ­i­ty continues.”

In Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Pres­i­dent Biden spoke by tele­phone with Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau about the fires. The U.S. is send­ing more fire­fight­ers north of the bor­der to help Cana­da attack the out of con­trol blazes.

“Pres­i­dent Biden spoke with Prime Min­is­ter Trudeau of Cana­da today to offer addi­tion­al sup­port to respond to the dev­ast­ing and his­toric wild­fires burn­ing in Cana­da,” said the White House in a read­out of the conversation.

“The Pres­i­dent has direct­ed his team to deploy all avail­able Fed­er­al fire­fight­ing assets that can rapid­ly assist in sup­press­ing fires impact­ing Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties. To date, the Unit­ed States has deployed more than 600 U.S. fire­fight­ers and sup­port per­son­nel, and oth­er fire­fight­ing assets to respond to the fires. The two lead­ers also dis­cussed con­tin­ued coop­er­a­tion to pre­vent wild­fires and address the health impacts that such fires have on our com­mu­ni­ties. They agreed to stay in close touch on emerg­ing needs.”

“Hun­dreds of Amer­i­can fire­fight­ers have recent­ly arrived in Cana­da, and more are on the way,” said Trudeau. “On the phone today, I spoke with President
Biden about this crit­i­cal sup­port – and I thanked him for all the help Amer­i­cans are pro­vid­ing as we con­tin­ue to fight these dev­as­tat­ing wildfires.”

“We’re see­ing more and more of these fires because of cli­mate change. These fires are affect­ing every­day rou­tines, lives and liveli­hoods, and our air qual­i­ty. We’ll keep work­ing – here at home and with part­ners around the world – to tack­le cli­mate change and address its impacts,” the Prime Min­is­ter added.

Mean­while, in Par­lia­ment, right wing forces act­ed as if the fires did not exist.

“Wide swaths of the U.S. are feel­ing impacts from Cana­di­an wild­fires. As Ore­go­ni­ans know all too well, large wild­fires are huge threats to air qual­i­ty — and I hope this final­ly shines a nation­al spot­light on an issue folks in my state have faced for years,” tweet­ed Sen­a­tor Jeff Merkley.

We agree. Let’s hope this expe­ri­ence prompts mem­bers of Con­gress from east­ern states to care more about address­ing the threat of wild­fires in the future.