The smoke from wildfires in recent years has been so intense that it is decreasing air quality in the majority of the U.S., reversing some of the improvements made to air quality in the last several decades, according to new research.
Wildfire smoke in the U.S. had a “notable influence” on recent air quality trends in nearly 75% of states in the continental U.S., despite air quality that has been steadily improving over the past several decades, largely due to policies like the Clean Air Act, according to a study published in Nature on Wednesday.
Wildfires have been increasing in size, frequency and intensity in recent years – at the same time that progress in air quality improvement has stagnated across much of the U.S., with some regions reporting rising levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the study found.
I get the point of this article, but I really dislike the presentation. Nothing about the Clean Air Act’s policies or other steps toward improvements have been “reversed.” It’s just that large fires have caused worsening air quality. These are two entirely separate items that both happen to impact the same thing.
If we had not been taking those other actions to reduce pollutants, the air quality would likely be even worse when the fires were added in. I’d love to see a slightly modified presentation, something like, “Fires raised pollutants by X amount. If it weren’t for the Clean Air Act, the pollution level probably would have reached X+Y! But thankfully we took steps to reduce it before/during the fires.”
To use the term “reversed” feels like it’s trying to minimize the impact of the progress that we have made. And that’s throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It also sounds like the perfect, illogical excuse to stop trying. Nonsense.
