Eli5. Effect of poor air quality (wild fires) on the body working outside?

Question

I’m a 38 year old male in relatively good physical shape. I do vape cannabis and have for 10 years but other than that my lungs are healthy. Due to the nature of my job I’m working everyday outside of Chicago where the wildfires smoke is pretty intense. Between that and the high temperatures with no rain I’m a little worried. There’s air quality alerts everyday but I don’t know what it does to me?

In: 15

Answer 1

If you have asthma, COPD, some other respiratory disease, or feel that you need to be more cautious than the average person, you may want to pay attention to when the AQI is Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or worse. If those things don’t apply to you, you probably don’t need to worry too much about AQI below Unhealthy.