(TNS) - The choking siege of smoke over much of the Eastern U.S. from wildfires in Canada has exposed millions of Americans to dangerous levels of lung-damaging pollution. Everyone, after all, has to breathe.These wildfire smoke episodes are disasters as serious as hurricanes, floods or heat waves, and come with a steep human toll. Much like heat waves, “smoke waves,” a term researchers coined several years ago to describe consecutive days of unhealthy air quality from wildfires, are expected to grow more frequent, long-lasting and intense over the next few decades. And even people living hundreds of miles from a wildfire can pay a grave health toll. But only if we use this as an inflection point to get serious about slashing climate pollution and putting an end to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.

Source: Los Angeles Times June 12, 2023 21:55 UTC