Toxic smoke concerns | Doctor advises on best practices

[00:00:00]Smoke from hundreds of outofc control wildfires raging across Canada is once again blanketing skies over much of the Midwest and Northeast this weekend, pushing air quality into unhealthy and even hazardous territory for tens of millions of Americans. Hazy conditions, reduced visibility, and health warnings are spreading from Michigan and Minnesota down through New York and New Jersey. Adding to the tension, President Trump took to True Social, stating, quote, "We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their forests.

[00:00:34]I will call the prime minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it." To break down the real health risk and what people should do right now, we are joined by Dr. Lawrence Schulman, a pulmonologist and chief medical officer for Optim New York and New Jersey. Dr. Schulman, thank you for being here. Uh, >> oh, thank you so much.

[00:00:54]>> To begin, what exactly is it in this wildfire smoke uh smoke that makes it so dangerous to our lungs and how quickly can it affect breathing and health overall?

[00:01:05]>> Yeah. So, the the fires themselves that are blowing down from Canada, they're they're just adding pollution to the air. And the pollution contains these microparticles, these small particles that are really less than 2.5 microns.

[00:01:20]And that is an a a type of pollution that when you breathe it in or when you're exposed to it, it sets off a variety of different health concerns.

[00:01:29]It's especially bad for children. It's especially bad for the elderly and especially for those who have lung disease like asthma, emphyma, COPD.

[00:01:41]>> And what specific symptoms should they watch for? When should they seek medical help?

[00:01:46]So people who are just exposed for short periods of time could have minimal symptoms. Things like coughing or wheezing, sometimes tearing, sneezing, shortness of breath. It's when those symptoms become more severe and more prolonged. When you've moved yourself out of the outside and now you're indoors, but your symptoms are continuing. when you're continuing to have shortness of breath even after you've been away from the pollution for 20 or 30 minutes and you're still having shortness of breath, you're still wheezing and you just feel not right, that is absolutely when you should seek medical help.

[00:02:24]>> Yeah. And always good just to air on the side of caution. Um for families in the New York, New Jersey area dealing with this smoke this weekend, what are the most effective and practical steps that they can take to protect themselves indoors and outdoors?

[00:02:39]the easiest thing to do is to stay away from it. So, not being outside is the prime thing that you need to be able to do. So, staying, you know, staying inside, staying in air conditioning, if you have an area of your home where there are is a hepailter, that is exceptionally successful. If you have to be outside, you should really minimize the amount of time that you are in that exposure. You can cover your face. You can wear an N95 mask if you really need to, but especially those people with, like I said, bad health conditions like COPD and asthma, those patients, those people should really stay away from the outside entirely.

[00:03:19]>> I mean, just driving into work uh here in DC, you know, the vi visibility was pretty awful just because of that smoke.

[00:03:27]Um, these crossber smoke events, they have become more frequent in recent years. 30 seconds left, but from a medical perspective, what long-term health concerns should we be thinking about?

[00:03:39]>> You know, the the concerns are really mostly short-term with the exposure, but over and over again, as you continue to have more of these exposures, more events, then you can continually you continually have a step down in your lung function. Um, your immune response can kind of become a little bit heightened. It's not something that you want to be exposed to over and over again because there can be long-term effects. Again, can't say it enough for those people with health conditions, heart disease, the elderly or the very young, those are the people that really need to reduce the number of times that they're exposed to to serious situations like this.

[00:04:16]>> Helpful advice. Dr. Lauren Schulman, thank you for joining us tonight.

[00:04:20]Thank you so