How Canadian Wildfire Smoke Is Jeopardizing Health Across North America

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A study published in June looking at US Medicare recipients found wildfire smoke exposure led to more than 20,000 additional heart failure cases a year. Pregnant women exposed to wildfire smoke showed a higher risk of premature birth and low birth weight in newborns, according to a 2023 study focused on Australia. 

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How do we measure air quality?

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Air quality is typically measured using an index that standardizes the concentration of pollution in a given location. Stations around the world continuously take samples and provide real-time updates. We know, for example, that the air quality index, or AQI, hit 161 in Duluth, Minnesota, on Wednesday as smoke pushed into the region. 

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While an AQI below 50 is considered good air, anything above 151 is considered unhealthy and will likely have some impacts on the general public. Anything that climbs above 300 is likely to affect nearly everyone breathing the air, while readings between 101 and 150 are considered unhealthy for sensitive groups, including children and older adults. In areas where the most intense fires are burning, the AQI climbed as high as 500 on Thursday.

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State and provincial governments track air quality, as do national governments in both countries. The data used to create AQI readings comes from air monitors found in a variety of locations, ranging from schools and businesses to TV stations. Some are used to track air quality near roads or sites prone to pollution, such as petrochemical facilities.  

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How have the fires affected international relations?

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Wildfire smoke is worsening relations that were already at their lowest point in decades after Trump imposed tariffs on Canada early in his term and repeatedly referred to the country as the 51st state. 

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A chorus of Republican lawmakers from the Midwest has complained about the smoke. That includes six members of Congress who wrote a letter to Canada’s ambassador to the US last month claiming a lack of active forest management was driving the “suffocating” wildfire smoke their constituents were dealing with. State-level lawmakers have also voiced concerns.

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In response, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew accused the US lawmakers of “trivializing” the explosive blazes, while praising US firefighters who are assisting Canadian efforts to control the blazes. 

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Are Canada’s forest management practices to blame?

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Canada is exceedingly efficient in fire monitoring and control compared to the US, said Mark Ashton, a dean of Yale University’s Forest School. But Canada’s massive swaths of forested land, a sparse population and limited infrastructure mean the country is constrained in its ability to respond to all blazes. 

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“In the most remote, difficult to access regions, you have no choice but to monitor and let burn,” Ashton said, adding that such an approach is pretty much the same strategy used in remote areas of Alaska. Indeed, of the roughly 500 uncontrolled blazes in Canada, 305 were being monitored.

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Still, the country lacks a consistent approach to assessing risk, one that guides wildfire responses, and funding for wildfire prevention, mitigation and preparedness hasn’t kept up with an increasing need, researchers wrote a 2020 study.

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Is there anything more that can be done to prevent or limit fires?

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Canada has been making some changes to its approach to wildfires, including integrating Indigenous cultural burning practices and, in British Columbia, planting more broadleaf trees that don’t burn as easily rather than conifers in areas where timber has been harvested near urban locations, said Stefana Dranga, a wildfire research officer at Natural Resources Canada. Canada is also borrowing techniques from the US, including the use of pre-defined strategic fire management zones, a tool for identifying land features that can stop or slow wildfires for suppression, she said.