The Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency warns local air quality continues to suffer from Canadian wildfire smoke. NKU biological sciences professor Chris Curran says smoke particles can get deep in the lungs and cause all kinds of problems.
“Typically, our summer air quality alerts are based on ozone, not particulates. What’s unusual about this is: it’s the particulates that are particularly high.”
Curran studies the effects of pollutants on the human body. She says breathing in wood smoke is as bad as smoking a cigarette.
“And I’ve seen this with the wildfire smoke in California. Many of my colleagues in toxicology have collected samples and looked at what’s in there,” she says. “It definitely has quite a toxic mixture of chemicals, gases, and particles.”
Air quality alerts include the measurement of 2.5 pm. That stands for particulate matter. Curran says the 2.5 means the particles in question are very small. She says the human body can filter out larger contaminants.
“We’re equipped to trap and clear the big stuff. But the fine stuff, once it gets in the lungs, they’re surrounded by capillaries, which gets it into your blood stream,” she says. “And then it can go to your heart. It can go to your brain. It can cause inflammation wherever it lands.’’
Curran says it's best to stay indoors or limit time outdoors when the air quality index is above 100. She says fortunately, there are a lot of N-95 and KN-95 masks still around since the pandemic, and those will do a good job at filtering out particulates from the air.
Curran says it's not just people with preexisting conditions or the elderly who should be worried. She says children are still growing, and very susceptible to contaminants. Curran says a lot of exposure to wildfire smoke now could lead to problems like asthma later.
The Southwest Ohio Air Quality Agency has extended the alert for Friday, citing high levels of both ozone and particulates.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Brian Coniglio says some of the smoke will clear out in time for the holiday weekend. “But with the fires continuing across much of Canada, we’re still seeing new smoke influxing into the area,” he says. “So it’s going to be a while before we actually see crystal blue skies around here, I’m afraid.”
Coniglio says expected storms will help clean the air, at least temporarily, but those storms could be strong or severe tonight and again Saturday.
Coniglio says the smoke may have had an effect on our local weather. “For the month of June, at Cincinnati airport (CVG), we’re running 1.9 degrees below the 30-year average,” he says. “You can’t really assign a reason for the exact amount, but it’s possible the smoke could be factoring into that and decreasing the amount of solar radiation reaching the ground, so the temperatures could be affected by that.”
Congilio says the atmosphere is complex, but the fires and the smoke may be affecting long-term weather patterns, too.
