Burke said, however, that growth in both population and the severity of wildfires, driven by the climate crisis, means that it is unlikely that more people have ever previously been exposed to toxic wildfire smoke than on Wednesday. The Stanford research looks at wildfire smoke levels and gauges the average exposure for all Americans, and has done so since 2006. The eastern seaboard luckily hasn’t had to deal with air quality events like this before, so many people just weren’t prepared.” Good luck to anyone trying to get an air filter anywhere in New York yesterday. “Even staying at home is not fully protective. “People had terrible indoor air too, just really bad,” he said. Many New Yorkers stayed indoors rather than brave the campfire smell lingering on streets shrouded in smoke but even this did not fully shield most people, Burke said, with indoor air monitors in Manhattan showing that people experienced more than 100 micrograms of particulate matter. Source: NOAA 48-hour smoke forecast, June 9, 2023 Source: NOAA 48-hour smoke forecast, JGuardian graphic. “I expect we will see an uptick in respiratory hospitalizations, pre-term births and, sadly, mortalities.” “The levels yesterday were quite dangerous, particularly if you are in a vulnerable group,” said Burke, adding that this includes vast swaths of people such as the elderly, children, pregnant women and those with prior medical conditions. In New York, where the sky went from a milky white to a Blade Runner orange over the course of a day when schools and playgrounds shut down outdoor activities and people started donning masks outside not worn since the early days of the pandemic, the particulate matter hit around 195 micrograms, more than five times above the national air quality standard. This high average level of pollution is well beyond the next largest such event, experienced in September 2020 on the US west coast following a record year of fires in the western states, and was far more severe for those directly in the path of the smoke, across much of the north-east US.

Stanford researchers calculated that the average American on Wednesday was exposed to 27.5 micrograms per cubic meter of small particulate matter carried within the plumes of smoke.

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