Wildfire Smoke Is Health-Ruining. Here’s How to Prevent Heart and Lung Damage
Wildfire season is fully upon us—and with it, the smoke. The most spectacular threat of a wildfire is of course the possibility it might directly threaten lives and homes, like the wildfires last year that devastated Los Angeles.
But it is the smoke and the stinging haze—and especially the invisible particulate matter borne aloft for hundreds of miles—that is most likely to pose grave health risks to millions across the country, as wildfires rage in Canada and across the American West during summer months. Cardiac deaths spike after wildfires. So do visits to lung doctors. Smoke is bad for you.
The more we know about the health effects of wildfire particulates in the air, the worse the effects seem to be. Many of the tiny particulates in wildfire smoke are both highly inflammatory and small enough to enter the bloodstream after entering through the lungs. They might then swim in your blood for weeks. High concentrations of particles smaller than 2.5 microns (PM 2.5) can harm developing lungs, lower fertility, damage mental health and ability to concentrate, and increase risks of health conditions ranging from stroke to heart disease to lung cancer.
Health risks from wildfire smoke are especially troubling for immunocompromised people and people with asthma, says Heidi Huber-Stearns, director of the Center for Wildfire Smoke Research and Practice at the University of Oregon. But even healthy children are vulnerable.
“This is an issue for developing lungs, whether or not they seem to be visibly suffering or wheezy,” Huber-Stearns told WIRED. “It doesn’t have to be a kid who has other health issues. It’s all kids.”
The best policy during hazardous air quality warnings is to stay at home near a good air purifier. But this isn’t possible for all people. Here’s how to keep your lungs and your family safe as the air fills with health-damaging soot. If you’re more worried about the fire than the smoke, check out WIRED’s guide to emergency preparedness for tips on how to safeguard your home and plan a bug-out bag.
Know the Air Quality Where You Live
The first line of defense is always intelligence. Wildfire haze and taint have become an unavoidable fact of summer life in the western United States—and increasingly in the Northeast, as Canadian wildfires send a stream of eye-squinting haze into America’s most populous corridor.
Airnow.gov is a partnership among multiple federal agencies, aggregating data from thousands of air quality monitoring stations. It’s also likely the most up-to-date source of information on air quality in any given neighborhood, including forecasts for the coming days and weeks. Punch in your zip code to see the air quality index in your area and the most prominent pollutants.
In general, if the air quality index is higher than 150, sensitive individuals should avoid being outdoors for prolonged periods and consider masking with N95 respirators. This group can include children, older people, people with lung disorders, and immunocompromised people.
At an AQI above 200, denoted by the color red on Airnow’s map, this advice applies to everyone, regardless of health status. Wear masks. Stay in clean air spaces when possible. Outdoor physical exertion should especially be avoided.
Use an Air Purifier to Create a Clean Air Space
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If you can afford it, the best tool for keeping your home particulate-free is a high-quality air purifier to remove dangerous particulate matter from your air.
While you might not have the budget to blanket your home in purifiers, a more achievable goal for many during a hazardous air-quality event is to create one “clean air space” in your home, says Huber-Stearns.
For her own part, Huber-Stearns has invested in multiple air purifiers, including the Coway brand WIRED recommends as a top budget pick. WIRED’s top pick for wildfire smoke, the Rabbit Air ($370) is an affordable air purifier option that can clean a 550-square-foot space about four times an hour.
If you’re able to invest in an air purifier to clean the air in even a single room in your home, this can become your dedicated “clean air space” for the family to gather—or even to bunk together overnight when the air is especially grotesque. If a $400 device isn’t in the budget, Huber-Stearns notes that a DIY box fan filter will do in a pinch.
This is not major surgery, and mostly involves duct-taping an appropriately sized MERV 13-certified air filter over the front of a fan. For more detailed advice, here are the Environmental Protection Agency’s instructions on how to build your own DIY box fan purifier, technically called a Corsi-Rosenthal box, if you want to feel fancy at home. Among box fans, we recommend this Lasko ($24), which my colleague Kat Merck rates as her favorite box fan for its portability, value, and reliability. I’ve recommended a filter brand that’s easily available, but watch out: Air filters can sell out quickly during major wildfire events, and I’ve seen price gouging. Try to avoid paying triple figures for filters.
Studies show that a basic box filter can be comparably effective to a store-bought purifier, according to Huber-Stearns, as long as you make sure to replace the filters when they start to appear dirty. In a smoke event, this can happen fast. Stock up.
Monitor Your Air Quality at Home
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You’ll probably notice when air quality slips dramatically. But it can still sneak up on you. An indoor air quality monitor can also help to alert you when the air quality in your home has dropped to dangerous levels. WIRED’s top air quality monitor pick, the AirVisual Pro from IQ Air, offers excellent PM 2.5 and CO2 monitoring, with a helpful display of both indoor and outdoor conditions as well as temperature and humidity.
But a budget approach can also work, especially if you’re trying to monitor multiple rooms. This low-cost, $46 air quality monitor from GoveeLife will alert you when PM 2.5 particulates from smoke reach dangerous levels, whether in your main family space or in your bedroom as you sleep.
Avoid Outdoor Activities During Wildfire Smoke Events
Jogging is usually a healthy activity, and we’re all proud of you. But in an air quality event, it’s one of the worst things you can do, notes Huber-Stearns. Same goes for sending your kids outside to play.
“Basically, anything that’s making you breathe harder is worse with poor air quality,” said Huber-Stearns. When you work out, you breathe deeper and pull in as much as 10 times more air during extreme exertion—and therefore a lot more pollutants.
The biggest thing she does during air quality events to protect her own family is “keeping to clean air spaces.” She stays at home more. For fun, she takes the kids to the library instead of the park. Who knows? Maybe your kids will learn to have fun at the library too.
For those who can’t skip a run day, wearing an N95 mask while exercising is likely safe, according to a small 2022 study by the Cleveland Clinic. But some clinicians worry that heavy breathing and exertion might defeat the point of wearing a mask, because your heavy breath is likely to break the tight seal between your face and the mask that’s needed for effective filtration. It’s also not overly comfortable to breathe heavily while wearing a mask.
And if you’re going to work out? The usual advice is to do so indoors, in a clean-air space. This might take place in a gym with a good filtered HVAC system. Or it might be your home, with an air purifier.
If You Must Go Outdoors, Mask Up
If you go outside into a swarm of invisible, lung-damaging particles, wear a mask. This includes when you’re driving.
One of the side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic is that a lot of us might still have N95 respirator masks hanging around the house. Unfortunately, N95 masks have expiration dates. And yours might not be certified anymore, mostly because the elastic straps degrade. Maybe it’s time to re-up, given that a 50-pack can be had for less than $20.
Especially try to educate your kids to wear their masks, to protect their still-growing lungs. Even if they’re not wheezing, the dirty air matters most for children, said University of Oregon smoke expert Huber-Stearns.
But don’t trust this: Kids like to pull down their masks when you’re not around, because masks are uncomfortable. Which is to say, Huber-Stearns still recommends staying indoors in filtered air whenever possible.
Take Care of Your Mental Health
Something people neglect, according to Huber-Stearns, is that constant vigilance can wear you down. Grant yourself comfort, and attend to simple needs. For example, window air conditioners aren’t the best-insulated form of cooling. But prolonged heat stress can be as bad or worse for your health than declining air quality, Huber-Stearns said. Which means you’ll still want to do whatever you can to keep cool during summer wildfire season.
But the biggest new arena for concern and research during wildfire smoke events is overall mental health. It’s hard on a person when the air itself seems like it’s trying to kill you. It frays the nerves and taxes one’s ability to cope.
“There are communities that have had six to eight weeks of hazardous air quality in a row,” said Huber-Stearns. “The mental health impact of smoke—we’re just starting to see some research with acknowledgment of this—is very real.”
The severity of these effects came as a surprise to Huber-Stearns and other researchers, when studying the effects of wildfire smoke events. Over time, she noted, smoke-hazed air can make you depressed. It can make you mean. It can make you irritable. It can also make you isolated, as people stay indoors to avoid unhealthy air.
There’s no simple answer to all this. But one simple step is just to be aware of it—and to understand that there might be a proximal cause to this run-down, no-good feeling you have. It can also be helpful to look out for these symptoms in the people you love.
“It can be really trauma-invoking for people that have been through fire or other smoke events,” said Huber-Stearns. “I think there’s not a recognition of how much of an impact that can have.”