Smoke from the Canadian wildfires that's blanketed parts of the East Coast, including New York City, is now wafting across inland Virginia. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality tracks air pollution from monitoring stations across the state. As of Thursday afternoon, the air quality dashboard shows:
- very unhealthy levels of pollution in Charlottesville,
- unhealthy levels in the Shenandoah National Park and Winchester, and
- good but bordering on moderate levels in Harrisonburg and Natural Bridge.
Each location is labeled with an AQI number.
CHUCK TURNER: AQI stands for air quality index, and what that is, is it's an index that was put together by the EPA to make talking about air quality information a bit easier. It's on a 0 to 500 scale.
Chuck Turner is the department's air quality monitoring manager.
TURNER: Albemarle High School right now is currently registering "code red" on the webpage, so that would indicate an AQI value between 151 and 200. At that level, people with respiratory or heart disease, the elderly, some who may have COPD … are potentially at risk, and you want them to be careful and to moderate their activities accordingly.
How long it sticks around will depend on weather conditions.
TURNER: From the forecast models that I've looked at, at least through early Saturday morning, the state will be impacted by smoke from the Canadian wildfires.
He said the main pollutant in the smoke is called PM2.5, which the EPA defines as particulate matter that are 2.5 micrometers and smaller – tiny, inhalable droplets of solid and liquid materials suspended in the air.