“OUR CHESTS FEEL TIGHT”
In the Midwest, current index levels on Thursday had soared beyond that figure, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency tracker.
Chicago along with Toledo, Ohio, and areas in Minnesota relatively close to the fires were well into the 700s on the air quality index during the afternoon, with much of the rest of the upper Midwest also experiencing AQI levels in the worst category of “hazardous”.
A Major League Soccer match in Chicago was postponed as municipalities across the region postponed outdoor events.
Erin Lucey, 38, works on her family’s organic vegetable farm in south-central Wisconsin and spent the morning harvesting zucchini, beans and cucumbers, among other tasks, with laborers wearing masks in muggy heat to filter out the hazy smoke blanketing the area.
“Our chests feel tight,” she told AFP, saying the smoke combined with recent searing heat waves and parched fields left conditions feeling “eerie”.
“We are all thinking of the delicate balance of growing food in this type of future, and remarking how we can’t imagine what it will be like here in 100 years,” she said.
“If people were outside like us working and seeing how everything looks, if they didn’t have the convenience of air conditioning, we would be making much faster changes to address the climate crisis,” she added.
The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy said it expected the dangerous conditions to continue through Friday, and that “our best model for smoke only predicts out to 48 hours.”
“That model is currently showing improvements on Saturday, but it is likely that smoke will linger and recirculate for a while,” the agency said.
Discover more from PressNewsAgency
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.