- Wildfires are increasingly causing destruction and illness around the world, but the smoke drifting southward from eastern Canada this week is a new experience for the tens of millions who live in the U.S. Northeast.Are health risks lower during a first-time wildfire smoke event?
"The bad news is, there's no safe level" of inhaled particles from wildfire smoke, said Doug Brugge, a public health researcher at the University of Connecticut School of Medicine."The higher the exposure, the worse the risks, but even at levels below the national safety standards, these particles can make people sick."
But even in healthy adults, some effects of exposure - such as sore throats, excessive phlegm, coughing, headaches and brain fog – can appear immediately and often persist long after the smoke plume is gone, said Keith Bein of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis.Particulates from wildfire smoke enter most buildings in high concentrations, experts say.
On average, when you are indoors, the concentration of wildfire pollutants is about half of what it is outdoors, according to Dr. Jasvinder Singh, a lung medicine specialist at Medstar Franklin Square Medical Center in Baltimore.The U.S.