Canadian wildfires have affected Wisconsin air quality for a month. So what can Wisconsinites do?
When she received word of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources' statewide advisory on air quality, Chelsea Chandler canceled her plans of taking her two young children to Governor Dodge State Park.
The lake would still be there at the end of the advisory and she didn’t want to risk exposing her 4-month-old baby to a potentially dangerous environment.
“I realized there was probably minimal risk, but my son’s body is immature and less able to cope,” Chandler said. “I work on this stuff for a living. I have the flexibility to go to the park next weekend.”
Since the first week of July, smoke from Canadian wildfires has spread across the atmosphere in several U.S. states, including Wisconsin, according to the National Weather Service, cranking up the air quality index to yellow, orange and red in northeastern Wisconsin counties. According to the DNR, the pollutant PM2.5 poses the greatest threat during wildfires, although carbon monoxide and ozone concentrations affect air quality as well.
Craig Czarnecki, DNR's air program public information specialist, explained that health risks associated with PM2.5 can be so severe to vulnerable groups because of the way the pollutant penetrates the respiratory tract and bloodstream.
“Once in the bloodstream, these particles can be pumped throughout the body and can cause health problems for individuals with heart and lung ailments,” Czarnecki said over email.
Across Wisconsin are 19 sites for air quality monitoring that indicate the levels of PM2.5, which the EPA incorporates into its fire and smoke map data via AirNow. Green Bay East High School covers one such site and, in the past week, PM2.5 reached dangerous (red) levels midafternoon on July 31, with the highest reading at 167 PM2.5 on the Air Quality Index.
For contrast, a moderate reading (yellow) for Tuesday measures 70 on the AQI, which is trending higher on the forecast. AirNow recommends that people sensitive to smoke use precautions and keep outdoors activities light.
A stable, or "good," PM2.5 reading ranges from 0 to 50. Parts or all of the state have been under an air quality advisory for PM2.5 since Thursday afternoon. As of Tuesday afternoon, the northern half of the state was under an advisory.
Wisconsin has been downwind of wildfires in Canada and California for the past couple of years, and air quality in each instance reached unhealthy levels of PM2.5. While Czarnecki said the latest years of wildfire activity aren't long enough to infer long-term trends, he also noted that wildfire "frequency, longevity or intensity in the U.S. or Canada will increase the probability of air quality being negatively impacted."
Small actions and big impacts in air quality challenge
In addition to being a mother to young children, Chandler is the director of climate solutions at Clean Wisconsin. While she admits she may have been overly cautious about the air advisory last weekend, she considers herself a far more privileged individual than members of the community who live in lower-income brackets and who live in nearby industrial corridors.
The air quality concerns perfectly exemplify the intersections of the climate change crisis and environmental justice, according to Chandler.
“There's already a lot of air pollution that (the marginalized) are being burdened with on a daily basis,” Chandler said. “So when you get fine particulate matter coming in from smoke from wildfires, that's really just kind of exacerbating the problem.”
Notably, some of the air monitors glowing orange Tuesday north of Green Bay are on tribal lands, with villages within the Bad River Reservation scoring an unhealthy AQI of 151 PM2.5 as of Tuesday.
Brown County is home to nine factories, which have had their fair share of EPA petitions over the years. While much has been made about water quality issues, companies such as Wisconsin Public Service Corp. have had to pay about $300 million to resolve clean air violations between the now-shuttered J.P. Pulliam Generating Station in Green Bay and the Weston plant in Rothschild in 2013.
Chandler, in her capacity as a climate solutions director, thinks that the effects of distant wildfires can still be combatted at the local level. While it may seem counterintuitive to put mitigation efforts toward disasters that have little to do with us, Chandler sees this as an opportunity to get serious about climate mitigation.
“The fires are not located in Wisconsin, so it doesn’t feel like it’s under our purview, but climate change and air pollution do not respect state boundaries, they do not respect international boundaries,” Chandler said. “These are really interconnected issues, which is why we need to work together on solutions.
Czarnecki, of the DNR, agrees. Some ways that he thinks Wisconsin residents can protect themselves against the worst effects of these recent air quality warnings are as follows:
- Staying informed by checking real-time air quality information. “During a fire event, PM2.5 would typically show elevated concentrations and is monitored at 19 sites across Wisconsin,” Czarnecki said. He recommended checking the Wisconsin Air Quality Monitoring Data. He also suggested signing up for DNR air quality advisories for select counties on their Air Quality News and Subscriptions page.
- Committing to small actions that can make a larger difference. Instead of burning yard debris such as leaves and shrubs, compost it. Turn off lights when not in that room. Unplug electronic devices such as phone chargers when they’re not in use.
- Driving less. There are plenty of opportunities, especially in the warmer months, to bike, walk or ride Bird Scooters places, or else take public transit.
Chandler understands that air quality issues are a result of local air pollution and greenhouse gases, and so for her, it’s important that the state turns in its fuel-dominated industries for renewable energy.
“(Transitioning to) renewables is going to get at both of these problems. It's going to reduce air pollution that is causing elevated levels of asthma and cancer risk, and it's also going to reduce our greenhouse gas impacts so that's helping with people being able to breathe cleaner air,” Chandler said.
She’d also like to see more education about the public health impacts of climate change, support for a faster deployment of renewable energy while retiring plants, focus on policies that promote energy efficiency, advocating cleaner transportation, and working with farmers and land managers on storing carbon.
“There's so many different ways that we can reduce our impacts and we're looking to do that as aggressively as we can and also in a way that's going to be equitable and not impact and overburden certain populations more,” Chandler said. “We need to make sure that they can be part of the solutions as well.”