
US air quality is slipping after years of improvement - gilad
https://www.apnews.com/d3515b79af1246d08f7978f026c9092b
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Herodotus38
As someone living in Washington state who dealt with wildfire smoke in 2017
and 2018 it's important to note the paragraph in the article that mentions
that the 2017 data was largely affected by wildfires. In our state, a lot of
these originate in Canada.

It's an important note because the takeaway comments I see so far are directly
implicating looser EPA regulations, when we don't have data to support that,
yet.

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izend
I lived in Western Canada since 93 and it’s crazy how bad the last two years
have been. Calgary’s August was brutal.

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Herodotus38
Do you think there's been any focus on ways to prevent these more? I imagine
they are in very remote regions where there actually is very low risk of harm
directly from the fires. I wonder if there is any possibility of using drones
or satellite imaging to identify them early in a way that allows them to be
put out before it becomes too expensive a problem to tackle.

I don't know if that would actually help though because a lot of people argue
it's a change in forest management and prescribed burns that allows these
bigger problems to develop.

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ceoloide
Where can I find the data they refer to? These articles are maddening: they
try hard to sound scienc-y and factual, yet they omit any reference that was
used to draw their conclusions.

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dwardu
They'll reply suggesting you do a simple Google search

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microcolonel
Note that air crosses borders, and wildfires are a primary cause of poor air
quality days; the measure mentioned by the AP.

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Tsubasachan
Wildfires are often manmade and exacerbated by climate change. Besides it
doesn't matter what chokes you in the end dead is dead.

I don't know if the US has air quality norms? If so it could force strong
measures that impact the economy.

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microcolonel
> _I don 't know if the US has air quality norms? If so it could force strong
> measures that impact the economy._

They have rather strong ones, a lot of people are completely ignorant of how
this stuff works. The U.S. tracks air quality across the country with a rather
high resolution[0][1]; here in Canada we don't seem to have anywhere near the
quality of reporting[2], and the air quality seems similar.

[0]: [https://gispub.epa.gov/airnow/](https://gispub.epa.gov/airnow/) [1]:
[https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=...](https://epa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=5f239fd3e72f424f98ef3d5def547eb5)
[2]:
[https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/index_e.html](https://weather.gc.ca/airquality/pages/index_e.html)

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cameldrv
I wonder how much difference Gasoline Direct Injection has made. To meet fuel
economy mandates it’s in most new car and light truck engines, and it produces
way more particulates than engines that use normal fuel injection.

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avocado4
[http://maps.who.int/airpollution/](http://maps.who.int/airpollution/)

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Retric
That’s not a generic air pollution map, just particulate pollution which often
gets really bad due to dry areas. Which is why the the Sahara desert is so bad
without people.

