Wildfire Smoke Impacts Air Quality Across US

While wildfires continue to scorch the land on the western side of the United States, smoke has spread far beyond the edges of the blazes.  

Areas as far east as New York and Washington, D.C., have witnessed hazy, smothered skies, demonstrating that the health risks associated with air polluted by low-lying wildfire smoke are becoming an increasingly widespread concern.  The Dixie Fire in Northern California is the largest among more than 100 massive blazes burning in more than a dozen states in the West, a region beset by drought and dry weather that have transformed forests and brushland into explosive tinder.  "This is what we're calling the 'new normal,'" said Barbara Weller, a pulmonary pathologist and toxicologist in the research division of the California Air Resources Board (CARB). "The fires, they're going to be longer. They're going to be larger. They're going to be impacting more people."