Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Climate

Wildfire Smoke Is a Wheezy Throwback for New York City

This looks familiar.

Manhattan in the smoggy 1950s and today.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

“An eye-smarting, throat-irritating twilight gray hung over New York, New Jersey, Long Island, and Westchester all day,” reported The New York Times, warning local residents that “today is to be warm, which would prolong the four-day smoky haze plaguing the East.”

True enough. Only, The New York Times published those words … back in 1953.

It’s been smokier in New York than California this year, with the Air Quality Index (AQI) hitting triple digits across the East Coast on Tuesday due to air blowing down from Canada, where there are more than 400 active fires. In addition to triggering a region-wide Air Quality Alert for more than 8 million people, all the smoke gave Manhattan the appearance of being in a brownish cloud:

Before the success of the Clean Air Act, scenes such as these were common over Manhattan — though not due to wildfires. Building incinerators, rampant coal burning, and vehicle emissions would regularly cause stagnant “killer smogs” that made “downtown Manhattan [look] like a Cloud City” during the mid-century. One such event, in 1966, is thought to have killed as many as 400 people.

Smog in 1953.Smog covers New York City in 1953.Library of Congress/Walter Albertin

Smog in 1870.More smog in 1970...Library of Congress/Bernard Gotfryd

Smog in 1973....and again in 1973.The National Archives/Environmental Protection Agency/Wilbert Holman Blanche

The smoke in New York this week is not directly comparable to the 1960s and 1970s in terms of concentration — the inhalable particles (PM 2.5) circulating on Tuesday were concentrated between 52 micrograms of pollutant per one cubic meter of air (that is, “52 µg/m³”) and 70.2µg/m³, depending on time of day and where you were on the East Coast. That’s still over 10 times the World Health Organization’s annual air quality guideline and “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” but a far cry from the 100 to 200 µg/m³ annual average concentration of fine particle pollutants that sickened and killed New Yorkers in the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, wildfire smoke is nothing to sneeze — or rather, cough — at; there is no single AQI number where the air stops being safe to breathe. That said, researchers have estimated that people of all ages are 1% more likely to die of nontraumatic events like a heart attack or stroke on days where the PM2.5 value is above 20.4 μg/m3 (that is, less than half the concentration in New York on Tuesday). The cumulative effect is bad too: People are “2% more likely to die on the day immediately after a smoke event,” Crosscut reports. There are also increased cancer risks from living near wildfires, another study found.

Though there have been major national improvements in air quality, contemporary New Yorkers are still no strangers to bad air, wildfires or no. From gas stoves that renters can’t avoid to subway platforms to trucks, buses, and power plants that spew cancer-causing particulate matter, we may have air that is technically better than our arch-rival Los Angeles’, but it still definitely isn’t great. That gives us all the more reason to pay close attention when it gets even worse.

Some throwbacks should stay in the past.

Blue

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Electric Vehicles

The New Electric Cars Are Boring

Give the people what they want — big, family-friendly EVs.

Boredom and EVs.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Apple

The star of this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show was the Hyundai Ioniq 9, a rounded-off colossus of an EV that puts Hyundai’s signature EV styling on a three-row SUV cavernous enough to carry seven.

I was reminded of two years ago, when Hyundai stole the L.A. show with a different EV: The reveal of Ioniq 6, its “streamliner” aerodynamic sedan that looked like nothing else on the market. By comparison, Ioniq 9 is a little more banal. It’s a crucial vehicle that will occupy the large end of Hyundai's excellent and growing lineup of electric cars, and one that may sell in impressive numbers to large families that want to go electric. Even with all the sleek touches, though, it’s not quite interesting. But it is big, and at this moment in electric vehicles, big is what’s in.

Keep reading...Show less
Green
Climate

AM Briefing: Hurricane Season Winds Down

On storm damages, EV tax credits, and Black Friday

The Huge Economic Toll of the 2024 Hurricane Season
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Parts of southwest France that were freezing last week are now experiencing record high temperatures • Forecasters are monitoring a storm system that could become Australia’s first named tropical cyclone of this season • The Colorado Rockies could get several feet of snow today and tomorrow.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Damages from 2024 hurricane season estimated at $500 billion

This year’s Atlantic hurricane season caused an estimated $500 billion in damage and economic losses, according to AccuWeather. “For perspective, this would equate to nearly 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product,” said AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jon Porter. The figure accounts for long-term economic impacts including job losses, medical costs, drops in tourism, and recovery expenses. “The combination of extremely warm water temperatures, a shift toward a La Niña pattern and favorable conditions for development created the perfect storm for what AccuWeather experts called ‘a supercharged hurricane season,’” said AccuWeather lead hurricane expert Alex DaSilva. “This was an exceptionally powerful and destructive year for hurricanes in America, despite an unusual and historic lull during the climatological peak of the season.”

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Climate

First Comes the Hurricane. Then Comes the Fire.

How Hurricane Helene is still putting the Southeast at risk.

Hurricanes and wildfire.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Less than two months after Hurricane Helene cut a historically devastating course up into the southeastern U.S. from Florida’s Big Bend, drenching a wide swath of states with 20 trillion gallons of rainfall in just five days, experts are warning of another potential threat. The National Interagency Fire Center’s forecast of fire-risk conditions for the coming months has the footprint of Helene highlighted in red, with the heightened concern stretching into the new year.

While the flip from intense precipitation to wildfire warnings might seem strange, experts say it speaks to the weather whiplash we’re now seeing regularly. “What we expect from climate change is this layering of weather extremes creating really dangerous situations,” Robert Scheller, a professor of forestry and environmental resources at North Carolina State University, explained to me.

Keep reading...Show less
Blue