Wildfire Smoke Is Choking Americas Cities Is Yours on the List? [Video]

Key Takeaways

Wildfire smoke isn’t just a problem for Western U.S. states anymoreSmoke from Canadian wildfires also hit the Midwest and Eastern U.S. in 2023Climate change will make such “smoke days” more common

TUESDAY, Dec. 10, 2024 (HealthDay News) — Heavy smoke from wildfires more frequently chokes the skies over the Western United States, but cities farther to the east are no longer being spared, new research shows.

Canada’s unusually intense 2023 wildfire season smothered American cities as far off as Baltimore and New York City, according to research presented Tuesday at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) annual meeting, in Washington, D.C.

“2023 was this strange year where the Canadian forests were just torched like crazy, and the Midwest got hit extremely hard,” lead researcher Dan Jaffe, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Washington, said in an AGU news release.

Cities in Oregon, Nevada, Washington and other Western states have had the highest …