Our Air Quality Index tip guide can be found here: Making Sense of the Air Quality Index
The fire season this year has been undeniably horrible. In the last few weeks, millions of acres of land and hundreds of homes have burned in the West. As a result, smoke from the fires has spread all the way to the East Coast, and some Western cities currently have the worst air quality of any major metropolises worldwide.
Living in Idaho, I’ve experienced this dangerous issue firsthand. Our air quality index (AQI) has ranged from a cautious “yellow” to an unhealthy “red” over the past month. In all my years living here, I’ve never seen such terrible air, especially not for this long. Simply put, it’s physically painful to spend time outside the house right now.
While the air is bad where I live, it isn’t even half as bad as many places in the West right now. In California, Oregon and Washington, people are being forced to contemplate what “beyond index” means for air quality, and how they are supposed to deal with it. (For those who haven’t heard that term, “beyond index” means that the air is so bad that the AQI is above the normal 0-500 scale.)
For Westerners, the air quality index is important to understand in order to make educated personal health decisions. But for some people, it might be confusing and hard to know what to do. That’s why U.S. PIRG has put together a guide to help people navigate this index and learn how it can affect their health.
At the beginning of this fire season, I definitely could have used some better advice on how to use the air quality index. I was a little lost as to what all the numbers and colors meant for myself. When the smoke began blanketing Idaho, I could tell the air was acrid, but I decided to exercise outside anyways. I figured, how bad can it be
The Link LonkSeptember 19, 2020 at 05:51AM
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Smoke is Not a Joke - State PIRGs
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Joke
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