Wednesday’s widespread smoke continued to obstruct visibility in the Portland-Vancouver area.
The Washington Smoke Information blog listed Vancouver’s air quality as unhealthy for sensitive groups, an improvement over Tuesday’s designation as unhealthy for everyone. Sensitive groups include people with asthma, diabetes, heart and lung conditions, respiratory illnesses and colds, stroke survivors, children younger than 18, adults older than 65 and pregnant women.
Air quality advisories issued by the Southwest Clean Air Agency and Washington State Department of Ecology were extended until noon Thursday for Clark County and surrounding counties. Air quality levels will shift between unhealthy and moderate, and haze may not affect all areas at all times, according to the advisory.
The conditions in Washington have been compared to massive metropolitan areas, such as Beijing, where air quality is often hazardous, with media outlets reporting that local air quality is among the worst in the world.
But, according to Wednesday’s blog update, the diminished air quality here and the pollution plaguing cities in South and East Asia are fundamentally different and not suited for comparison. Beijing and New Delhi “experience terribly compromised air quality primarily in the winter months. And it’s much worse than what we experience, even during wildfire season,” the update says.
“So stacking the relatively ‘clean’ season in Beijing/ Delhi against our ‘dirtiest’ season is not a proper comparison,” the blog post states.
