Smoke impacts from Canada wildfires hit U.S. Black, poor communities harder
Global News
The impacts are particularly hard on poor and minority communities that are more likely to live near polluting plants and have higher rates of asthma.
Smoky air from Canada’s wildfires shrouded broad swaths of the U.S. from Minnesota to Pennsylvania and Kentucky on Wednesday, prompting warnings to stay inside and exacerbating health risks for people already suffering from industrial pollution.
The impacts are particularly hard on poor and minority communities that are more likely to live near polluting plants and have higher rates of asthma. Detroit, a mostly Black city with a poverty rate of about 30%, had the worst air quality in the U.S. on Wednesday, leading the Environmental Protection Agency to warn that “everyone should stay indoors.”
“The more breaths you’re taking, you’re inhaling, literally, a fire, camp smoke, into your lungs,” said Darren Riley, who was diagnosed with asthma in 2018, a few years after arriving in Detroit.
“Many communities face this way too often,” said Riley, who is Black. “And while this wildfire smoke allows, unfortunately, many people to feel this burden, this is a burden that far too long communities have faced day in and day out.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov site showed Detroit in the “hazardous” range. Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Ohio; and Pittsburgh all have “very unhealthy” air. A wider circle of unhealthy air spread into St. Louis and Louisville, Kentucky.
Earlier this month, smoke from the wildfires blanketed the U.S. East Coast for days.
Another round of drifting smoke from the wildfires was moving through western Pennsylvania and western New York and headed toward the Mid-Atlantic, said National Weather Service meteorologist Byran Jackson. In Canada, smoke will migrate across Quebec and Ontario over the next few days, Environment and Climate Change Canada meteorologist Steven Flisfeder said.
In the U.S., the smoke is exacerbating air quality issues for poor and Black communities that already are more likely to live near polluting plants, and in rental housing with mold and other triggers.