>> Good evening and welcome to MetroFocus.

I'm Jack Ford.

Tonight we bring you a special report on the dangerous burning smoke blanketing the tri-state area.

This week New York City ranked first and month major cities for the worst air quality worldwide.

Smoke from Canadian fires has been drifting in from hundreds of miles away engulfing the tri-state area casting the orange haze we have seen in the sky.

It is an unprecedented event.

The smoke so thick at times the FAA briefly suspended flights into LaGuardia.

Hundreds of flights have been canceled and thousands more across the country delayed several Broadway shows and sporting events have also been canceled.

For many New Yorkers the reaction has been more visceral.

The site of the red haze choking the city.

The smell of smoke permeating the air raising concerns about how safe the air is to breathe especially for the most vulnerable.

Here to assess the condition and the threat is an atmospheric scientist at the Columbia climate school's Earth Observatory and air pollution advisor to the U.S. State Department.

Thank you so much for joining us.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> Let's start with the first question.

That is how and why is this all happening?

>> The main culprit now is a series of extreme fires to the magnitudes we have not seen before in this part of the country in central eastern Québec.

That coupled with unfavorable wind conditions that have been blowing this smoke into the tri-state area has led to the situation we see now.

>> Let's talk bigger picture first and then we will get to specifics.

I mentioned in the introduction New York City, worst air quality of major cities in the world for the last day or so.

Air quality index and you can correct me, usually around 50.

I think it got close to may be exceeded 400 yesterday.

Talk about what that means when talking about an air quality index, numbers that high and how historic is that?

>> The air quality index is designed to be a public outreach type of tool folks can use to make their decisions about planning their time outdoors.

This 400 level you talked about is something we have not seen at least in about 20 years in New York City.

It is pretty unprecedented.

>> When we look at historically, we have seen at the last 20 years or so and we compare it as I mentioned in the introduction to the rest of the world, I think somebody said at one point it is two or three times than what the worst other case scenario in the world is.

How alarming should that be for us?

>> I think pretty alarming.

Anytime you see concentrations and levels this high you can have health impacts on everybody.

Not just the vulnerable.

Not just people with heart and lung conditions.

Even healthy people can get sick and have negative health impacts.

The good news is these kind of occurrences are rare in New York City.

There other parts of the world where this happens a lot more.

We do have that on our side that this is projected to be a short occurrence right now.

Let >> Me follow up on something you said and that is the health impact.

I will get two precautions we should be taking but let's focus on the health impact.

It is frightening looking.

We have this eerie red orange haze that you can smell the smoke.

Talk about the impact.

How does that get within our system and what sort of impact can it have on various parts of the body?

>> The main health culprit in smoke events like this is what we call fine particles.

Our research shows these small microscopic particles that are floating around in the smoke and we are breeding them in, they can penetrate deeply into our lungs.

Not only did they get into the lungs but most of them are small enough they cross over into the bloodstream.

Once they get into the bloodstream you're talking about all kinds of negative effects on the circulatory system in addition to the possible long issues.

Short-term type of things people can feel from breathing this error in would be typical respiratory and cardio related issues.

You might have shortness of breath, coughing, wheezing, sore throats, stinging of the eyes etc.

>> How about long-term?

The forecasters are saying perhaps in the next day or two that should be diminishing and within three or four days diminishing significantly.

What about long-term exposure within that timeframe?

>> In the long-term, particles of this nature are responsible for millions of deaths globally around the year, premature deaths.

This sounds frightening and I think it should be but it is important to note this is relative to a lifetime or many years of exposure to high levels of pollution.

In the long term, New York City being relatively clean otherwise, folks are going to be pretty protected.

This short event we are having for a few days is not going to help out on the long-term side either.

>> Let's talk short-term precautions.

Masks, are they effective?

How should they be worn and under what circumstances?

>> Masking is a good option right now.

These last few days and through tomorrow.

You want to make sure you have a high-efficiency filtering mask.

These are the N95's if you can go back to the pandemic times we learned about all of that.

The N95's, the KN95's how should they be worn?

I would recommend wearing them outside.

We are in situation that is sort of reverse of the pandemic where outdoor air is a little more dangerous than indoor air.

I recommend wearing them outside.

Recommend they are well fitting and don't have any leaks or gaps.

>> What about your eyes?

Is there something you should be doing if you are outside?

The first device I am sure is don't go outside if you don't have to but if you do, how about protecting the eyes?

>> I would not be as concerned about that necessarily.

The main route for these particles impacting our health is through breathing.

If you want to wear eye protection, it certainly would not hurt, but I think the key would be the masking is the number one option.

>> One of the interesting aspects of this and people have talked about and I experience myself that you can actually taste the smoke which is probably not surprising.

It has raised another question and that is with regard to the safety of our drinking water.

If we are tasting it when we are walking around outside is it being absorbed into the drinking water sources?

Is that a problem?

>> To my best knowledge that is sort of not a very high concern for drinking water.

I'm not saying it does not really happen at all but the way that our water filtration systems work in New York City and most of the water in New York City comes from reservoirs which are well maintained, well protected.

That is probably going to be a pretty minor effect on the water.

>> Let's go back to our first question which is why and how this is happening.

I have seen a number of people raise the question of is this in some way connected to climate change?

Is climate change in some fashion and shooting to this particular event?

>> I think it is likely it has contributed to this particular event.

I do need to be a little careful and say at this point in time it is difficult to attribute any particular event that is currently still ongoing to climate change.

I think that research is going to be happening maybe even as we speak to make that connection quantitatively but what we can say with a little more confidence is the symptoms of climate change that are well known and well-studied from our research, things like hotter temperatures, worsening droughts , changing precipitation patterns, drier soil.

All of these things lead to longer fire seasons, bigger burned areas, and more smoke paired the connection is there.

There is a little bit of work that needs to be done to attribute specific events to climate change.

>> We tend to in order to help us assess things to compare instances to other instances.

You had some involvement in this.

Toxic train derailment that took place recently in Ohio.

How would you compare the two?

>> It is an interesting question.

I think in terms of the magnitude of the crisis and I would say they are pretty comparable.

We have a high pollution problem right now.

There was a similar one in East Palestine, Ohio during the train to Rome it.

We are talking about different types of pollutants.

That is one way they would differ.

In the fires we are mostly talking about fine particles.

In the train to Rome it case, it was a spillage of a chemical that basically evaporates off the surface and becomes this noxious gas.

There is a fundamental difference in the chemistry that it was the gaseous pollution affecting folks in eastern Ohio versus what we are seeing now.

>> Last question for you.

Might be the most important question and that is how do we prevent situations like this from occurring in the future?

>> That is the million-dollar question.

How can we address climate change?

How can we reduce our emissions?

I think there are a lot of things that can be done at the high level policy decision-making level.

Things like switching to cleaner energies.

Electrification.

Technologies to reduce carbon dioxide in the air.

All of the laundry list of climate mitigation and climate solutions come into play here in terms of impacts on wildfires.

>> You have been extraordinarily helpful in giving us some assistance in understanding what is happening here and perhaps more important understanding what we should be doing to protect ourselves now and in the future.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and expertise with us.

You take care now.

>> You are welcome.

Thank you.