North America's 13 most polluted cities in 2023 were all located in Canada, found the IQAir report.
Canada’s 2023 wildfire season dropped air quality across the country to levels so bad, for the first time, the country outranked the United States in regional pollution rankings, a new report has found.
The report focused on fine particulate matter, or PM2.5, which gets its name from the particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter that get vaulted into the air from wildfires, wood-burning stoves, and the combustion of fossil fuels. Both cities sit in the vicinity of the Donnie Creek wildfire, an inferno that burned an area larger than the province of Prince Edward Island, and was by far B.C.’s most destructive wildfire ever recorded.
Wildfire's impact on public health growing but still unclear The IQAir report found 41 per cent of Canadian cities recorded annual PM2.5 levels above 10 micrograms per square metre. That’s twice the annual guideline level set by the World Health Organization . “We don’t really know that for wildfire smoke,” he said. “Now, pretty much everyone in Canada is going to get a week or more of smoke once every two or three years.” 'It's the future' Jack Chen, a research scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Air Quality Research Division, said results from the IQAir report are not surprising.
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