Here's how breathing bad air affects you, and how to protect your health

INTERVIEWER: The other major story of the day is the air quality across the region. It's beginning to improve across much of Minnesota, but alerts remain in effect through tomorrow morning for central and southern Minnesota. In the southwestern corner of the state, the air is still classified as unhealthy for folks with lung or heart disease, older people, and the very young.

Yesterday, smoke from Canadian wildfires settled over the middle of the state, casting what looked like a low-level smog over us, causing record poor air quality for the metro area. If you were outside at all yesterday, you felt it. You could almost taste it. And it was not good. Experts say this will probably not be the last time the air will be smoky this summer. Here to explain the short and the long-term health impacts of breathing wildfire smoke is Mayo Clinic Doctor Greg Vanichkachorn. He is on the line right now. Doctor, welcome, and thank you for taking the time.

GREG VANICHKACHORN: No problem. Thank you so much for having me again. I appreciate it.

INTERVIEWER: Absolutely. So I bet you were probably out yesterday. You probably felt what other people were seeing. What symptoms can alert folks to the fact that they're breathing unhealthy air?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Yeah, I definitely was out yesterday and noticed the haze and felt those effects. The most common thing that we see, of course, is going to be some respiratory effects. So individuals who may be sensitive to that kind of smoke may notice that they start coughing, they can start wheezing, or even be short of breath. But that's still only the tip of the iceberg, typically. I also remind folks that this can affect more than just their lungs. So we've also had reports of stinging eyes, runny nose, headaches, and fatigue. It can cause quite a few different symptoms.

INTERVIEWER: How long do you need to be outside to be affected?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Everybody is a little bit different. And what I would say is more than a few minutes is more than enough to cause symptoms, but any breath that you take in with this kind of matter in the air-- the smoke-- can be harmful. But the less time that you can spend out there, the better, I would say.

INTERVIEWER: So I was hearing some people trying to compare breathing the air to smoking a certain number of cigarettes. Do you think that's a useful way to understand the long-term health impacts of wildfire smoke?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: It's probably not the best way to look at that. Both smoke from cigarettes or wildfires can be bad for your health. We have a lot more information, obviously, of the health implications for cigarette smoking. But when it comes to actually wildfire smoke, that's a little bit more difficult. We've got some information that breathing in wildfire smoke over a matter of multiple days or even after a few months can cause some decreased lung function. But over the long term, we don't have the same kind of information as we do with cigarette smoking.

INTERVIEWER: I mean, there is smoke in the air, but there's other particulates as well. How deeply embedded can these particulates get in your lungs and what's the long-term effect? I'm sensing you don't maybe have an answer to that, but what might be something to take heed to?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Right. Yeah, so definitely you hit on a good point there. Smoke is what we call an aerosol, technically, and it's got lots of different particulates in there-- small little particles as well as some droplets. The actual mixture of what the smoke is depends, frankly, on what is burning. And those particulates and other substances-- they can get far down into the lung. And unfortunately, that's where the problems start arising. Those particulates-- they can make it difficult for the lung to function like it normally does, including moving out things like viruses and other matters that can get into the lung and basically make it more difficult for our lungs to stay healthy and to breathe.

So with that-- and that's why we see some troubles with individuals having worsened asthma or things like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease after prolonged exposure. And of course, the big question that everyone's wondering is is this going to increase the risk of, say, something like cancer for the long term? And that's the kind of information we're missing when it comes to wildfire smoke.

INTERVIEWER: So what do folks need to do to protect themselves?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Well, the first thing is to recognize that while certain groups, as you mentioned, are more sensitive to wildfire smoke, this is something that can affect any individuals who don't have any preexisting medical conditions. It's something that we should all take seriously, not just those with asthma and COPD. Of course, if you have the choice, you want to minimize going outside in these kinds of elements, especially doing any kind of vigorous activity.

If you are more sensitive, one thing that can be very helpful is helping minimize how much of the smoke gets into your home environment. One of the first things is, of course, to close the doors and windows, but also you can do things like setting your central air, if you have it, to recirculate. Another thing that we've found to be very helpful is using, actually, an indoor air filter, making sure there's adequate airflow, and not doing anything that could actually contribute to worsened air in the home.

It's kind of interesting-- a lot of individuals will be sensitive to the smell of the wildfire smoke. And so their natural way to treat that is burning a candle or lighting incense or something like that. That can actually make it worse on the inside and add to the overall particulate matter in the air.

INTERVIEWER: Right. And of course, you mentioned air purifiers. Do they work pretty well?

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Yeah. We do have some evidence that they can work, especially in a smaller area. I wouldn't say that it cures everything, and it's not a reason to just, say, sit next to an air purifier and filter and keep the windows and doors open, but in certain circumstances like this, it can help reduce the amount of particulates in the air.

INTERVIEWER: OK. And then if you do have to go outside, I've noticed other folks were wearing N95s-- got the old N95 back out again and the KN95s. Those are what you want to use and not a cloth mask.

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Correct. The cloth mask, even if it's wet, which is something that some people have tried, will not stop the particulates that are in smoke. It's just too small.

So those N95 or N100 masks, they're the best thing to use. If you have to go outside and you want to wear a mask, just make sure that you have it fitted properly. And remember things like facial hair can sometimes make those mask less effective.

CATHY WURZER: Right. All right, doctor, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate all the advice.

GREG VANICHKACHORN: Yeah, no problem. It's always a pleasure. Take care.

CATHY WURZER: Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn is an Occupational Medicine Specialist at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. To find out how much longer this smoky air is going to hang around or whether it's coming back anytime soon, we want to get the latest from MPR Meteorologist Sven Sundgaard. Sven's back. Hey, thank you for taking the time.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Absolutely. And, boy, the air has really improved already.

CATHY WURZER: Good. That's great news. So what's going on out there?

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, so we measure that air quality in terms of the particulate matter. And we want it under 50. That's what we consider healthy. It was as high as 240 to 270 in the Twin Cities last night, a record since we've kept track back to 1980, beating 232, which was measured in St. Paul in 1985. But Twin Cities now all moderate to even some locations coming in with good air quality-- Northeastern Minnesota, Hibbing, Ely, Duluth good air quality.

Still, though, that pocket of very bad air in southwestern Minnesota, around Marshall, it's still 153. So you can imagine the air is moving from northeast to southwest flushing this out. So that's why the poor air quality is getting pushed, shoved into that southwestern corner of the state now.

CATHY WURZER: OK. OK, thanks for that. So as I mentioned with the doctor, not all of this is wildfire smoke, right? There's other pollutants mixed into this.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. I guess the good thing we can think of with the smoke is that at least we're able to detect that. We can smell it. You could even taste it, I thought, yesterday at times, and certainly see the haze.

But another thing that we have in the air when it gets hot and sunny like yesterday is ozone. And it's good in the stratosphere. It protects us from ultraviolet radiation. But when we see it at the surface, it is toxic. And we breathe it in, and it gets absorbed into our blood-- not good. And that's a result of pollutants reacting with the sun and the heat.

So you don't want to see both. And on these hot, sunny days, sometimes we do see both of these. And yesterday was just one of several times we've seen that so far this season.

CATHY WURZER: And what do we think? Will we see this again? We've already had several air quality alerts so far this summer.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. So as I mentioned, in the short term, this kind of sneaky cool air-- this was not forecast a couple of days ago sneaking in across Lake Superior, really cooling things down is helping to clean out the air in the short term. But we've been mentioning as long as the overall pattern stays the same, hot and dry, not just here but across much of Canada, much of the North Central US, we're going to continue to see these fires.

And you're not able to contain all these fires in these really wild areas in northern Canada. And so as long as this pattern remains, we can probably count on smoky days on and off much of the summer, unless we see a big shift, a wet period here that is widespread.

CATHY WURZER: And we should also say, it is kind of tough, is it not, to issue an air quality forecast? It seems pretty variable.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah, and I think folks are starting to catch on to this, because I know some events have been canceled kind of too prematurely, because then the air cleared out quicker than expected. So remember, forecasting the weather, as we know, in Minnesota is already a little tricky business.

But now, you're trying to apply weather forecasting to something like pollutants, which are already a little difficult to try to predict where is that going to go. And we also can't predict exactly how fires are going to behave, right? A fire could expand, it could shrink. And that is all going to play into what happens.

So, really, it's kind of day by day. And I think people are noticing, this week was a great example, where each day the conditions were changing, the alerts were changing. And so really trying to go past a day or two is really difficult in terms of forecasting particular air quality.

CATHY WURZER: And before you go, of course, the drought monitor came out this morning, and it's really not good news.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Yeah. And this is related to all this-- as I mentioned, the dry weather. Of course, we know that climate change and dry weather doesn't directly produce a fire, but climate change and dry weather produces the conditions for these fires that we're seeing. And severe drought now has popped up in Minnesota. 2% of Central Minnesota, or Minnesota that's in Central Minnesota includes St. Cloud, Mora-- moderate drought now is expanded.

So the areas of drought in Minnesota now from 12% last week to 19%. That includes the northern half of the Twin Cities, much of Central Minnesota, West Central Minnesota around Ortonville, Morris, then the Southwest and Southeast corners of the state. 77% now of Minnesota is abnormally dry.

And the Twin Cities just finished a 31 day stretch from mid-May to mid-June, it's the driest ever for that period of our records since 1871-- just about a quarter of an inch of rain. And we do have a chance of rain in forecast, but it's not going to be a droughtbuster, I'm afraid.

The best chance of some significant rain, half inch to an inch, maybe Western Minnesota with a better chance in Eastern Minnesota coming Sunday. But it's going to be spotty. So it's going be kind of like last weekend-- if you get lucky, you get lucky. But most of us are going to be left wanting more, for sure.

CATHY WURZER: Oh. All right, Sven, thanks for the time.

SVEN SUNDGAARD: Absolutely, Cathy.

CATHY WURZER: Sven Sundgaard, our MPR meteorologist.