To the Point: What Is the Effect of Wildfires on Air Quality, and How Concerned Should We Be?
To the Point provides insights from 小蓝视频 faculty experts on timely questions covering current events, politics, business, culture, science, health, sports, and more. Each week we ask one professor just one critical question about what鈥檚 on our minds.
By now, everyone has seen the photos of New York City鈥檚 skyline smothered in a cloud of smoke, formed by听the record-breaking wildfires in Canada鈥檚 Quebec and Nova Scotia provinces. New York鈥檚 Air Quality Index reached "hazardous" levels, prompting dire public health alerts, school shutdowns, and the cancellation of outdoor activities.
Closer to home, Washington, DC, experienced its highest particle matter reading in more than 20 years, as smoke from the Canadian wildfires drifted down the East Coast.听It prompted a near unprecedented 鈥淐ode Purple鈥 Alert warning of 鈥渧ery unhealthy鈥 air across the region, and NBC Washington's Chief Meteorologist Doug Kammerer reported, 鈥淎ir quality is the worst we have seen in the DC area since records were kept.鈥
We asked 小蓝视频 Professor of听Environmental Science听Valentina Aquila to explain why this is happening now, it鈥檚 impact on health, and how concerned we should be.
What is the effect of wildfires on air quality, and how concerned should we听be?听听听
The smoke from the burning of biomass contains particles with a diameter of one or two micrometers, about 20 times or more smaller than the thickness of a human hair. When inhaled, these small particles can penetrate deep in the lungs and cause health conditions such as bronchitis or asthma attacks. Exposure to smoke particles can aggravate chronic conditions and even cause premature death.听听
While the number of wildfires per year in North America has not increased since the 1980s, the extent of area burned has. This is connected to climate change: the longer, warmer, and drier summers are creating optimal conditions for the spreading of wildfires and prolonging the fire seasons in many regions. Once a spark ignites a fire, the dry vegetation provides fuel to grow it and the warm temperatures and dry winds make the fire hotter and more difficult to contain. The energy generated by the fire propels the smoke high in the atmosphere, where it travels long distances.
This is the reason why, right now while I am writing this piece, the sky in DC is hazy and the : widespread fires from Canada are transported by the winds all the way down the East Coast, causing smoke concentrations that the EPA classifies as 鈥渦nhealthy.鈥 This has happened before. During the past couple of weeks, DC was impacted by smoke from forest fires in New Jersey and Nova Scotia, and as far as Alberta. In July 2021, a trail of poor air quality formed from large wildfires in Oregon and Washington State across north America all the way to the East Coast, following the wind flow.
We do not expect these climate-related trends to stop or reverse any time soon, as long as climate change will continue unabated. Land management practices such as prescribe burning and the planting of fire-resistant tree species can help reducing the availability of fuel and slowing down and containing wildfires. On an individual level, we can implement precautions and limit our exposure to smoke. provides a real-time map of the air quality index, color-coded in terms of risk. While short exposures to smoke does not generally represent a risk for healthy individuals, it is always a good idea to pay attention to local air quality reports.
About Professor Valentina Aquila
Professor Aquila joined 小蓝视频鈥檚 Department of Environmental Science in 2017. Her research focuses on the role of solid and liquid particles (aerosols) on the Earth鈥檚 atmosphere and climate. Currently, she is principal investigator for a NASA project to understand the role that volcanic eruptions and forest fires has played in the climate during the satellite era. Prior to 小蓝视频, Aquila worked as a researcher at NASA and Johns Hopkins University. She earned a master鈥檚 in physics from the University of Genoa, Italy, and a PhD in meteorology from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany.