Poor Air Quality Returns to US After 3 Days of Respite, New York AQI at ‘Unhealthy Levels’

Poor air quality returned to the northeast of the United States on Sunday as a smoke plume moved across New York City, leaving the air quality plummeting to “unhealthy levels for sensitive groups”.

The Air Quality Index in New York was recorded at 103, posing a threat to those with heart or lung problems. However, the Sunday’s pollution level was not as bad as the heavy haze that recently shrouded the region making the sky orange and shooting the pollutant levels to record high, The Guardian reported.

The air quality has been improving in the last couple of days since the thick yellowish haze covered the city last week as a result of smoke from the wildfires which continue to burn in Canada’s forests.

The smoke had begun to dissipate on Thursday evening due to the shifting direction of the winds over the Canadian province of Quebec, where the fires are raging. By Friday evening, the air quality level had dropped to a refreshing 38 on the 500-point scale.

However, there is still large variation in the air quality every hour, even in the neighbourhoods with the cleanest air, New York’s environment and health data portal said.

“That means for short periods, some New Yorkers are exposed to high levels of pollutants,” the portal added.

Meanwhile in Pennsylvania, the state department of environmental protection declared an air quality action day and issued a code orange alert on Sunday after elevated ozone levels across three regions of Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania authorities have still imposed restrictions on young children, elderly and those with respiratory issues to limit outdoor activities. Ozone forms as when carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide react with sunlight.

The Maryland environmental department has also issued a code orange alert for Sunday in the Baltimore region.

Nearly 17,800 square miles have burned since the beginning of the year, above previous averages as the country battled out-of-control blazes that a provincial minister warned on Saturday could last “all summer.”

Last week, more than 111 million people in the US had been under air quality alerts as of Thursday due to the fires. The wildfire smoke from Canada was also detected several thousand miles away in Norway.