A sun cloaked in haze beat down on Burlington residents Sunday as the state’s biggest city and surrounding areas broke 200 on the U.S. Air Quality Index, under the category “very unhealthy.”
The haze, which blew in from wildfires in Canada, extended across northern and central Vermont, with most of the impacted area falling into the air quality index categories “unhealthy” and “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
Thanks to a southerly wind, the air quality began to improve on Monday and is expected to continue clearing throughout the week, according to Roger Hill, a meteorologist based in Worcester.
While a high pressure area north of the St. Lawrence Valley brought the smoke to Vermont, an area of low pressure in Michigan is gradually becoming the main influence, pushing the smoke back toward Canada, he said.
“While we’ve been seeing colder than normal temperatures here in Vermont, generally through the month of May and a bit into June, they’ve been experiencing well above normal temperatures and super dry conditions,” Hill said.
While the smoke is retreating for now, it may return later in the week, said Scott Whittier, warning coordination meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Burlington.
Vermont is likely to see intermittent impacts from the fires while they’re burning, Whittier said. It’s more likely to blow toward the Green Mountain State when the air is stagnant in Canada, creating an uninterrupted column of smoke, and when a northerly wind appears to blow the smoke south.
The air quality is worse than it has been in the past because of the proximity of the fires, Whittier said.
With fires in the West, “the smoke plumes and the air particulate have a lot of time to kind of disperse and diminish by the time they reach us.” With these fires, there hasn’t been enough time or distance for the smoke to disperse, Whittier said.
While the air quality is the poorest it’s been in recent memory, Hill said, it’s not the first time in recent years that Vermont has had wildfire smoke blowing in from Canada and other states, such as Oregon and California. It’s a trend, health officials say, that Vermonters can expect to continue because of climate change.
Climate change is expected to intensify the dry and hot weather that causes fires and lengthen the fire season, prompting scientists to predict that the risk of very large fires could increase sixfold by the middle of the century.
“As a climate scientist and a public health scientist, I feel very comfortable saying that the increased risk of health impacts as a result of this wildfire smoke is attributable, in part, to climate change,” said David Grass, senior environmental health program manager at the Vermont Department of Health.
Strategies to cope
So what should Vermonters do to keep themselves safe while air quality is bad?
Grass said the answer depends on where a person is located and how susceptible they are to poor air quality.
People with histories of heart or lung disease, people who work outside, children at outdoor camps and people experiencing homelessness, for example, are at higher risk of illness related to poor air quality.
There’s a range of precautions that people can consider if they’re worried about exposure to poor air quality, Grass said. Those who are at higher risk may want to be cautious when the air quality index reaches 101 or higher, while those who are less vulnerable may want to begin taking precautions when the index hits 151, which is considered unhealthy for the general population.
Depending on the level of concern, Grass recommends avoiding strenuous activity outdoors, wearing a K-95 mask outdoors, staying indoors where air quality is typically slightly better, or creating a “clean room” with an air filter.
Inside, it’s best to close windows and, if available, turn air conditioning to a setting where it recirculates indoor air instead of pulling it from outdoors.
Grass also pointed to the importance of considering people who don’t have housing and aren’t able to easily access indoor spaces.
“When we have the ability to make people who are experiencing homelessness feel welcome, whether it’s in a public building, a library, a retail space, that’s important to do always, but especially when it’s extremely hot out, or when the air quality is bad,” he said.
Illness from air quality can take a number of forms, he said. Mild symptoms can include eye irritation, a scratchy throat or a headache. More severe symptoms can include wheezing, shortness of breath, coughing that won’t stop, or chest pain, in which case Grass recommends consulting a health provider or, if necessary, heading to the emergency room.
“It’s not a risk that we have a whole lot of familiarity or experience dealing with,” he said. “We’re going to be faced with hazardous air quality conditions as a result of wildfire smoke coming from wind more frequently as a result of climate change, so we need to have that ability to be able to respond and make plans and adjust and adapt.”
One way to adapt, he said, is to pay attention to each person’s bodily response to smoke and haze. It gives people three data points to work with: knowledge of the local air quality levels, knowledge of a person’s personal risk, and knowledge of their own symptoms and reactions. Those data points can help a person make decisions about what activities are safe.
Poor air quality can feel like a “minor encumbrance that’s getting in the way of the important stuff,” Grass said, but to him, it’s “a bit of a kick in the pants.”
“We need to focus on that, and ensure that our kids and ourselves and people who have heart disease and elderly folks don’t have to be burdened with constant concern over whether it’s an OK day for them to go outside,” he said. “It’s a hugely important issue. It is an existential issue.”
