The issue for Sunday’s game, said Joel Dreessen, an air quality forecaster for the state of Maryland, is whether more smoke spills south after weekend storm systems.
“Some of the models are starting to indicate that we’ll start to pull down some smoke,” he told AFP.
Trump said he would call Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney “to find out what they are going to do about” the smoke.
“The United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
TRAVELLING TOXICITY
Chris Carlsten, who studies the health impacts of fire smoke at the University of British Columbia, told AFP that the fine pollution particles from wildfires are particularly impactful on the lungs, whereas vehicle pollution skews slightly towards heart impacts.
He said plumes can be filled with wood and vegetation debris but also paint, plastic or metal.
And as smoke plumes travel, they undergo “photochemical ageing”, a series of reactions that Carlsten said “seem to make, from everything we understand in the chemistry, the aerosol more toxic”.
The upper Midwest that is closer to the fires has faced especially bad air, with parts of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin all recording air quality readings deep into the “hazardous” range for days.