Here & Now

What Air Quality Alerts Mean for the Health of Wisconsinites

Frederica Freyberg:

In environmental news, headlines describe Canada as baking and burning this spring. Canadian wildfires have had their effect here in Wisconsin in this unusually hot, dry June. We’ve had some relief now but what scientists call fine particulate matter from the fires can easily get into the lungs and cause serious health problems. We check in with Craig Czarnecki from the Department of Natural Resources for more.

Craig Czarnecki:

We, since 2012, have not issued an advisory for PM2.5, the fine particulate matter. We’ve had four this spring. So we haven’t had to issue any in the last 11 years or so and this spring, from the wildfires in western Canada — no, eastern Canada, we’ve had four, so it’s definitely been an unprecedented spring as far as wildfire impacts here in Wisconsin. Typically, we’ve seen wildfires like this impact Wisconsin with the smoke usually later in the summer. Typically when it’s hotter and drier, but that seems to be happening a little bit earlier than usual and that’s actually happened the past couple years.

Frederica Freyberg:

And so if there is an air quality alert like that describing it as unhealthy for sensitive groups, what should people do?

Craig Czarnecki:

Yeah. So when we have an advisory that’s called “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” that would include people with heart and lung ailments or heart disease, lung disease, asthma, things like that, and then other people would include the elderly and young children as well since their lungs are still developing. So when we have an advisory for “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” we just ask people in those groups to consider shortening their outdoor activities, less intense outdoor activities as well and then if they are having any symptoms like coughing or shortness of breath, that would be a sign to maybe take a break and take it a little bit easier on those days.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you also monitor for ozone, and what is ozone?

Craig Czarnecki:

So ozone is a combination of a few different pollutants, mainly volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen. These are two different pollutants. The number one source of those are mobile sources like cars and trucks, and these pollutants react in the atmosphere with heat and sunlight to form ozone. So that’s why on those really hot, sunny days, that’s when we’re typically seeing those elevated levels of ozone pollution.

Frederica Freyberg:

And what is an elevated level of ozone? What does that do to a person’s health?

Craig Czarnecki:

Yep. So, again, that would impact folks with breathing issues, asthma, things like that. You’re going to be a little bit more sensitive. You’ll feel those, you might have a little shortness of breath, perhaps some coughing, things like that.

Frederica Freyberg:

And did some of those higher levels of ozone that you were monitoring happen earlier as well this year?

Craig Czarnecki:

Yes, we’ve actually issued — we’ve had nine ozone advisories so far this spring, which is a little bit higher than normal. Although the last few years, we have been seeing a slight increase in the number of ozone advisories we’ve been issuing in spring, but we’ve had nine so far this year and those have ranged from the unhealthy to sensitive groups to a little bit of that unhealthy level as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

And meanwhile, those two things kind of happened at the same time, the wildfires and the ozone levels.

Craig Czarnecki:

Yes. This has been a very interesting spring. I know other people in the program, along with myself, haven’t really seen a spring like this before. We’ve had some really — in mid-May, we had wildfire impacts from out west and then we had really hot, stagnant weather with a number of ozone advisories issued with this weather-blocking pattern, the air gets stagnant and those pollutants don’t have anywhere to go because the conditions are pretty calm. So once that finally blew out, then the wind shifted and now we’re getting wildfire smoke, or we were getting wildfire smoke from eastern Canada. So it’s just been kind of a really unlucky run of circumstances here that have caused the air quality issues over the past few weeks here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Meanwhile, are scientists and your agency considering that this could be kind of the new normal going forward or that it could get kind of worse and worse in these ways through the years?

Craig Czarnecki:

We are seeing that these wildfire impacts are happening a little bit earlier than they typically have been and that’s been the last few years we’ve been seeing that. Again, those hot, dry conditions, those are just lasting longer out west and up in Canada as well. So we don’t like to think it’s getting worse, but the chances of seeing more of these wildfire impacts seem to be something that this will be more of a — not as unusual, I suppose, as it has been in the past. We’re seeing these happen a little bit more often with these really hot, really dry conditions here.