Puzzle Description:

New York City at noon this week

#1: Bill Eisenmann (Bullet) on Jun 9, 2023

It's a very easy puzzle to solve.

It's NOT a very easy problem to solve.

Here are some photos:

https://apnews.com/article/wildfire-haze-canada-new-york-washington-0d24be8f977dc3e43fbbf17e363edfed?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter

I've seen the New York pictures with the yellow air. Hard to believe that the air quality on Wednesday in Ottawa, my city, was not only worse than in NY but the poorest. In. The. World. We've had the smoke coming to us from both Quebec and northeastern Ontario. Everyone is back in N95 masks, this time outdoors, with health hazard warnings on all media. And the experts say this is only the beginning of the 2023 wildfire season. You're so right, Bill, it's very real.

Poor air quality from the smoke made it all the way down to SC. We had smoke warnings not to go outside too without wearing a mask. Our air got worse after sunset.

Arizona has had more than it's share of brush fires and forest fires, but judging by Joanne's comment we never had any quite this bad as far as smoke is concerned. I've been close but we never had to travel great distances to exape the worst of the smoke.

I'm 100% with you Bill.

I looked at all the photos...and wept. I have no words...I cannot imagine what that's actually like 24-7...has this ever happened before?...this bad? Do masks help? What are people doing? This scares the living daylights out of me!

Also, the US news seems to all be about the air quality in the US, but meanwhile Canada is on fire, which must be much worse.

Valerie, air quality where I am has improved from hazardous to fair since Wednesday, but this is far from over. The ongoing problem is that so many wildfires across the country are still burning, and even now, not halfway into June, the environmental forecast is that it will be Canada's worst summer wildfire season in recorded history. We are already being told that many of the fires, both current and future, will have to be allowed to eventually burn themselves out, and our forests and grasslands with them, because our wilderness firefighting resources, both people and equipment, cannot possibly keep up and will have to triage and concentrate their efforts on the fires that threaten people and property. With regard to both the wildfires and the air quality, the situation gives emphatic literal meaning to the idiomatic expression "Depends on which way the wind blows."

JoDeen, with hazardous air quality, only N95 masks will be effective. They are mandated to keep out 95% of microscopic particulates. They do this partly because their entire surfaces are respirators and partly because they seal to the face so tightly. The disposable medical or cloth masks so many people used during these past few years won't help at all in this situation. The link here dates from mid-covid but as near as I can tell remains valid:

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/personal-health-care-us/products/face-coverings-101/

The cool thing about N95 and KN95 masks is that the fibers in them are electrostatically charged, so that they attract particles. That makes them vastly better at filtering out particles than another mask with the same size spaces between the fibers.

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