It’s been another historic summer of fires and poor air quality in North America.
For a long time, programs have been left to translate public air quality guidance to their own context. However, the guidance was never meant for them. The EPA and regulatory and public health agencies assume everyone can simply slow down or stay indoors when the air becomes toxic.
I started this project at the SCA when I was the Risk Management Director. I adopted an air quality matrix from Korea (there were some really nasty days when the AQI monitors would show purple as the bad air settled in from industrial China). We developed national guidance for all of SCA’s programs, but it didn’t yet apply to every program type. We knew it would take several years of testing and learning to hone into good guidance for everyone.
This summer, some states are catching up. Washington’s new guidance is particularly helpful for us. It’s the first public health guidance I’ve seen that specifically accounts for outdoor schools, day camps, and overnight camps. It’s a fantastic starter resource that removes one layer of translation for our world.
There’s one thing I’ve found more state public health guidance is agreeing on. When the AQI is above 151 (in the red), all youth programs and activities should be canceled. This is a stark difference from just 5 years ago, when the advice was to move kids indoors. Now, they’re saying to cancel program activities outright.
Washington, Oregon, Montana, and Minnesota all agree. Yet California, Utah, and the EPA guidance for schools only restrict kids with known conditions at the red AQI level. I’d imagine more will adopt the stricter guidance in the coming years.
As the scientific community learns more about wildfire smoke, public health guidance is becoming clearer, too.
When I worked at the SCA, program staff wanted to know how much time they were allowed to spend in bad air before having to wear masks or move indoors. We didn’t know the answer, and the public health guidance wasn’t as clear about what to do when indoors isn’t an option. There was a feeling that it didn’t apply to us, because it wasn’t written for us.
With clearer guidance becoming more widespread, I’m curious to hear from you. Are your staff still looking for ways to hedge the guidance, to stretch it out to make it less of an inconvenience? Or is your program’s risk appetite for bad air also changing?
Let me know how this summer has been for you.
Stu
P.S. Brendan Madden, Shana Tarter, and I, from the Wilderness Climate Lab, will host a pre-conference session at this year’s WRMC in Portland, OR. We’ll talk about AQI, and more importantly, we’re asking attendees to join us in outlining questions from our sector and taking a run at drafting clearer guidance for a variety of outdoor program types and situations. I hope you’ll join us.