Our air quality is currently the worst on the planet, and it’s not even close

You likely don’t need us to tell you this, but our current air quality is beyond horrendous.

Try to stay indoors as much as possible in the foreseeable future and if you need to go outdoors, consider wearing some sort of mask.

A special air quality statement is in effect from Environment Canada and the agency lists air quality in the Okanagan, Shuswap and Thompsons regions as 10+, which is “very high risk.”

“Wildfire smoke can be harmful to everyone’s health even at low concentrations,” the alert reads. “Everyone can take action to reduce their exposure to wildfire smoke.”

For a more in depth look at how bad the air quality is, we can turn to IQAir, which shows the US AQI figure for these regions as mostly between 400-500.

Anything over 150 is considered “very unhealthy” and levels as high as we’re seeing locally today are very hazardous to health.

To put that in perspective, on IQAir’s live list of the most polluted major cities, Doha, Qatar is highest ranked at 177, while Vancouver and Seattle are tied for ninth at 115.

“These main pollutants used in the US AQI calculation are ones such as ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and both PM2.5 and PM10,” the site explains.

The main pollutant in the air here is PM2.5, which IQAir calls “one of the most dangerous types of pollutants that can be found” and has a size of 2.5 mirometers or less in diameter, around 30 times smaller than human hair.

Current levels of PM2.5 in the area are more than 70 times the World Health Organization’s annual air quality guideline value.

Here’s an explanation of PM2.5 from IQAir:

PM2.5 can consist of a variety of different materials, adding to the danger that it presents to health upon inhalation. These materials can be ones such as sulfates, metals, microscopic water vapor, mold spores (which can vary in their classification depending on the size), as well as soot, dust and silica particles. Due to its extremely small size, PM2.5 can penetrate deep into the tissue of the lungs, bypassing the body’s natural defense system and causing inflammation of the lungs themselves, as well as irritation to the entire respiratory tract.

Once inside the lungs, due to its minute size, it can pass into the bloodstream via the alveoli or small air sacs whose main function is the transportation of oxygen. Damage to blood vessels can be incurred, along with many of the ailments that were mentioned in the previous question. As a rule, the smaller the particle size is, the more danger it can present. Larger particles can irritate exposed mucous membranes and aggravate various conditions, whilst ultrafine particles can cause all manner of potentially terminal illnesses, making the prevention of their prevalence in the atmosphere all the more important, as well as finding ways to reduce one’s inhalation of said ultrafine particles.