Why you need to protect yourself from the smoky air

Minnesota’s air quality has been exceptional for all the wrong reasons this week. On Thursday, an air quality monitor in Brainerd recorded the highest particle reading on record in the state, since the monitors were installed about 20 years ago.

“And then a few hours later that smoke spread to St. Cloud, and we broke that record in a matter of hours – at about 422 micrograms,” said Nick Witcraft, air quality forecaster for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). “It was quite impressive to watch.”

And those two recordings broke a record that was set last week in Red Lake, in far north Minnesota.

All that unhealthy air is heading to Minnesota from the wildfires burning across the Canadian border.

And Witcraft now says another cold front is expected to move even more smoke towards Minnesota, prompting authorities to extend an air quality alert until Tuesday.

“And then once the smoke settles in, we’ll have high pressure on the area, and the smoke will just recirculate for a few more days,” says Witcraft. “This is going to be a long lasting and impactful event for a lot of people.”

Including his family.

Health experts claim that fine particles in the air can be harmful even to healthy people, but especially to susceptible populations, including children, the elderly, and people with respiratory disorders, such as asthma.

“I had to stop my son from playing lacrosse yesterday. He came home and had to use his inhaler, which he rarely has to use. But I was like, “OK, this affects me now,” Witcraft says.

A huge swath of north-central Minnesota, sweeping south to include the Twin Cities, is now expected to have very unhealthy levels of fine particles through Tuesday – labeled as purple for the air quality alert.

Most of the rest of the state is included in the next lower level, in the red and unhealthy level.

Dr Zulfiqar Ali, pulmonologist at Sanford Health in Fargo, North Dakota, says that under these conditions everyone should be careful.

“And especially people who have underlying pre-existing conditions such as asthma, COPD or chronic lung disease,” he says. “They are particularly at high risk and they need to be very vigilant and careful about this in their situation.”

He says children are more at risk, as are pregnant women.

But Ali says even healthy people need to be careful. He recommends not running or exercising outside.

“You know, when you exercise, you breathe almost double, or maybe get 1.5 times your normal breathing rate. And that way, you’ll breathe more polluted air inside, and it will be more harmful, ”he said.

The fine particles of wildfire smoke are smaller than a human hair and can penetrate sensitive tissue deep in our lungs. And from there, says Jesse Berman, an environmental epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, they can enter our bloodstream and travel through our bodies.

“So it’s not like people are just affected by their breathing – these particles get into the body and can affect your cardiovascular system. They can affect neurological systems. They can affect your kidney system. effects all over your body, ”Berman says.

This is of particular concern because Minnesota is experiencing smokier days from wildfires – in Canada, in the west, and at home.

Between 2015 and 2018, the MPCA issued twice as many air quality alerts due to smoke from forest fires than in the previous seven years.

Berman, who studies the impact of extreme weather and air pollution on human health, says climate change and drought are fueling larger, hotter fires that spew more smoke into the atmosphere.

“And the more these wildfires occur, the more likely it is that here in Minnesota we will experience these plumes of smoke from events that occur hundreds, if not sometimes thousands, of miles away.”

Gov. Tim Walz met with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday to discuss the ongoing drought and wildfires. In a statement, Walz said climate change is real and is having a direct impact on the lives of Minnesotans.