The federal government recently updated its air quality index to better reflect the threat posed by wildfire smoke — but Ontario isn’t using the improved system, leaving gaps between the information available to the public and the true health risks.
linked to a litany of both short- and long-term health problems — measured at almost 100. That’s according to raw data from a provincial monitoring station, which is posted online hourly. Levels that high present health risks for everyone, regardless of age or pre-existing conditions.
“The daycares, the seniors homes, all those facilities that take care of our people at risk,” said Audette, a policy analyst in health and air quality forecast services. “They are paying attention.” Historically, the AQHI was calculated using concentrations of three types of unhealthy air pollutants: nitrogen dioxide, ground-level ozone, and fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. During a typical urban smog day, these three pollutants tend to build up slowly and linger like a dome. The two pollutants the index weights most heavily in its final risk score are nitrogen dioxide and ozone, and it uses a three-hour average to reflect this slower-building threat.
For scientists such as Henderson, the other major motivation was that their own research showed most of the risk during these smoky wildfire days occurred quickly, within the first hour of PM2.5 levels spiking. The province needed a system that responded faster.
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