many people were outside when air quality was pretty low in Jersey a few days ago but unless you were checking air quality alerts most didn't know that the air quality was dangerous now Rutgers scientists are examining the health impacts of the Canadian wildfires that have been worsening air quality here in the Garden State to speak more on this assistant professor at the Rutgers School of Public Health Dr. Georgios Kelesidis, joins me now so Dr Kelesidis' scientists found that the recent air quality here in Jersey could be comparable to dangers of second-hand smoking is that true yes so uh together with my colleagues here at Rutgers University we measured the concentrations the mass of the partic the fine particles that are produced during these wildfires and we found out that at the peak of this event the concentrations reached 330 micrograms per cubic meter to better understand how large this is right it's about 30 times larger than the annual average concentration of particles that we have in this region and as you said before essentially these large concentrations are comparable with the concentrations that we had for example in bars before the smoke bonds took place so we are talking about really large concentrations of small particles that can affect our health here's the thing the the haze and fog and even the smell at one point here in Jersey dissipated right but there were still air quality concerns so how should New Jersey residents know if the air quality is wavering if they if they can't see it well uh when we are talking about this high concentrations what I mentioned earlier of course you can observe the case but even smaller concentrations uh can be quite dangerous dark healthy especially uh to people with existing conditions so since especially this Canadian wildfires are quite unpredictable at the moment I would suggest to our audience here in New Jersey and generally Northeast of United States to check regularly the air quality index that is available by the Environmental Protection Agency so as soon as this index is above 100 I would suggest to people to avoid going Outdoors stay indoors and avoid any exposure to this Wildfire smoke right if you have to go outside especially when you have this large concentrations or particles in the air I would highly recommend to wear a mask in particular you may use n95 kn95 or ffp2 masks that provide very good protection but do you feel like you know in your expertise we should be getting like weather alerts about this because because not everyone just will automatically go on just not everyone will automatically go check I guess is my point and so especially if they can't see any of this so so do you think we should be getting weather alerts about this it could be good you know originally I come from Greece and my country is especially I think she's hit at the moment from wildfires in that region and the government also gives alerts regarding these wildfires and these Wildfire events and the smoke that's coming out of them so I would say this would be beneficial at least it should be explode as a measure thank you for joining me thank you so much