As smoke from Canadian wildfires continued blanketing the Northeast on Thursday, many outdoor workers in New York and New Jersey said they had no choice but to continue working and breathing in the polluted air to get paid.
Delivery workers, construction crews, street vendors and gas station employees said they felt scratchy throats and itchy eyes after spending Wednesday and Thursday working in air quality conditions ranked among the worst in the nation. The smoke prompted some school closures and event cancellations, grounded or delayed flights, and caused a spike in asthma-related emergency room visits.
“Yesterday was bad. I could feel it,” construction foreman Anthony Santillan, 23, said on Thursday. “Today’s better. It’s not orange anymore.”
Santillan was overseeing facade work on a new apartment building in Mott Haven and joked that the Wednesday afternoon sky matched the bright orange high-visibility shirts and vests he and his coworkers wear. He said he put on a face mask when the air quality got too bad on the job site.
Construction foreman Anthony Santillan, 23, said he's been wearing a face mask when the air quality got bad.
By midday on Thursday, the air was no longer as dangerous but was still considered “unhealthy” in many areas and remained a health risk, especially for those with pre-existing conditions, New York and New Jersey officials said.
Fergal Tackney, a construction superintendent, spent Wednesday at a job site in Long Island City. He said he didn’t know about the wildfires and was disturbed by the orange smog that enveloped the five boroughs and cast the city in a sepia tone on Wednesday afternoon.
“It was strange, all right. It was crazy,” Tackney said. “Some of the videos from the Manhattan skyline was just unbelievable.”
He said four of his company’s 10 jobs in Manhattan shut down early on Wednesday because of the haze and poor air quality.
Carmen Rojas, who sells cherry, coconut and mango ice cream from a small street cart in Newark, said she also went home early on Wednesday.
“I left at 1 p.m. because there were no sales and this got ugly, the air got really ugly,” Rojas, 63, said in Spanish, as a surgical mask hung over her chin.
She was back at her usual corner on Broad Street on Thursday.
“The air wasn’t as contaminated and the money — if we don’t work, what do I do at home? Nothing,” she said.
Carmen Rojas was back at her usual corner selling ice cream Thursday after the air quality forced her to go home early the day before.
But other workers Gothamist spoke with on Thursday said they had to come to work, even though they weren’t feeling well after inhaling the bad air on the day before.
“We must go to work. This is not easy. Here is not easy if you want money, if you want rent, if you want anything, you must work,” said Fuad Qissi, 56, a gas station attendant at a Mobile in Newark.
Qissi said that on Wednesday, motorists threw him a few extra dollars but on Thursday, “nothing.” He said he had a mask but takes breaks wearing it.
Stephanie Silvera, an epidemiologist and public health professor at Montclair State University, said emergencies such as these, which will become more common due to climate change, tend to disproportionately affect essential workers and lower-income communities where residents can’t afford to work from home, a disparity laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When you talk about some of the careers that are more likely to employ people who are lower-income, more likely to have asthma, more likely to live in environments that already have higher rates of air pollution, you're gonna see a disparate effect on them and a more negative effect on those communities,” she said.
“The effects are expected. We know that they're there. We need to do something to fix it,” Silvera added.
As the orange smog descended onto the region, gas station attendant Fuad Qissi said motorist tipped him extra.
on Sergio Ajche, who co-founded the group Los Deliveristas Unidos to advocate for better working conditions for delivery people, said he made food deliveries Tuesday without knowing much about the worsening air quality until he started to feel its effects.
“By the end of the day, I had a headache, my throat started to hurt, my eyes burned,” Ajche said.
Ajche said he never received a message about the air quality from the app-based food delivery companies he works for — DoorDash, Rely and GrubHub — though DoorDash spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz separately told Gothamist the company advised delivery workers to take precautions because of the poor air quality. Ajche said he decided to wear a mask on Wednesday after watching the news.
He said it made a difference and he didn’t feel as sick despite working outside all day — construction in the morning and deliveries again in the afternoon.
In addition to needing to work to make money, since much of his earnings come from tips, Ajche said that there’s less flexibility than there used to be in the hours that food delivery people work.
“Now you have to comply with your schedule, because if you don’t, you get penalized. They lower your rating,” Ajche said.
But Ajche said he views his work delivering meals as essential, and some customers have also recognized the risk delivery workers are taking this week to get them their lunch or dinner.
“The tips were a little higher than usual,” Ajche said. “A lot of people are conscious of the work we’re doing.”
But DoorDash deliverista Joaquín Fernando from Soundview said that while there was plenty of work to do over the past few days, customers he encountered weren’t tipping any higher despite the tough conditions.
“A lot of people were staying home so there was a lot of money to be made, but that didn’t mean more tips,” Fernando, 22, said as he dropped off lunch at a local business.
DoorDash didn’t increase pay either, he said.
Over at the corner of 149th Street and Grand Concourse, construction worker George Ortiz said he was lucky to work inside for most of the day on Wednesday. Several colleagues who worked outside woke up on Thursday morning complaining of respiratory problems, he added.
“The air quality has been a little different. Breathing different,” Ortiz said. “Outside, all that smoke messed up a lot of people’s chests.”
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life,” he added.
This story has been updated to cite DoorDash spokesperson Eli Scheinholtz saying the company alerted delivery workers to this week's air quality issues.
