It is easy to check the air quality
A New Study of Asthma-Associated Ear Visits on June 7: New York State, New York City, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
It found asthma-associated ER visits jumped 82% statewide on the worst air quality day, June 7. The central part of NY state saw the highest increases in ER visits more than twice as high.
Two studies published by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention highlighted the health effects of the smoke that shrouded the city skyline in late spring. A study was released this week.
“An asthmatic feels it before anyone else” if air quality improves, said Dr. Adrian Pristas, a pulmonologist in New Jersey.
A second study released by the CDC focused on New York state only, not New York City, because the state and city have separate hospital data bases, one of the authors said.
The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Medicine published a study that focused on New York City. The study found that asthma-associated ER visits increased by more than 50% on June 7.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic: When asthmatics felt like a fluke in May 2005, a Seattle asthmatic man decided to stay indoors
There are particles called PM 2.5 that can get deep into the lungs, making them hard for asthmatics to breathe. It was problematic as the wildfire smoke was and an analysis showed it had lower amounts of certain toxic elements in urban air pollution.
The third study tried to compare the spike in ER visits during the wildfire smoke with what happens at the height of a bad pollen season, and they found that the wildfires led to 10% more ER visits.
As the smoke got worse in June and the air in his backyard grew thick and “golden,” Acquaviva changed the filters on his air conditioners and stayed indoors for 2 1/2 days.
Knox recently bought two PurpleAir sensors after this summer’s wildfires. He placed one in his yard at his home and the other at a family cottage a few miles away. Knox has consulted for public health agencies about Covid-19 and other infectious diseases. Being forced indoors due to the Canadian wildfires evoked the lockdown days of the Covid pandemic, albeit with its own twists. Back then, the guidance for social distancing allowed for outdoor excursions, like going for a walk. For someone like Knox, it was a way to stave off cabin fever and get some fresh air. But when the smoke came, he felt pinned inside without respite.
In regards to climate change, all of the extremes that everyone is experiencing, and sadly, I think this is going to become the new normal. We are going to have to start living with it.
“It’s been an eye-opening experience, the last several months, just coming to understand the basic, most fundamental importance of clean air,” Sentementes says. “We just don’t appreciate it until you have to breathe in a lot of awful air.”
But this summer was different. The smoke lingered longer and spread farther. It also created quite a stir in areas that aren’t used to being that close to the effects of a cataclysmic wildfire. The world is heating up and the fires are getting worse, even though not all of them are in the immediate vicinity. Sentementes felt like this wasn’t just a fluke—something that affected his life every 20 years or so. This felt like something that would likely happen again, and soon.
When smoke from eastern Canadian wildfires smothered much of Canada and the American East Coast this summer, it resurfaced a distant memory for Gus Sentementes. The last time smoke descended on his home in Baltimore, Maryland, was in 2002, when fires in Quebec spread smoke more than 700 miles southward.
Asthma-associated ER visits increased by more than 50% on June 7 in the US’ New York City, according to a study published in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Medicine. The study further found that asthma-associated ER visits jumped 82% statewide on the worst air quality day, June 7. Smoke from wildfires in eastern Canadian countries had affected the US earlier this year.