Every Breath We Take
By 250 News
Seeing the Cutbanks through the haze Opinion250 photo
Prince George, B.C. - It's not something Prince George residents need to be told...they're living through it...
Ash and smoke from fires burning to the southwest of the city are making for some record-breaking poor air quality.
In fact, as of the latest reading at 5pm, the city's Air Quality Health Index is rated at Level 16 - Very High Health Risk on the provincial government's AQHI website. (click here)
The 24-hour levels of fine particulates recorded yesterday afternoon broke a record set back in 2004, and today's readings surpassed yesterday's.
The provincial air quality objective for coarse particles (PM10 ) is 50 micrograms per cubic metre, averaged over 24-hours.
As of 4pm today, Ministry of Environment Air Quality Meteorologist, Dennis Fudge, says the 24-hour PM10 rolling was 156 ug/m3 at the Plaza 400 downtown, 171 ug/m3 at the BCR site, and 161 ug/m3 in College Heights.
Today's averages are up considerably over the 102 ug/m3 rolling average for the downtown monitoring site for the same 24-hour period.
The rolling average for fine particulates (PM2.5) is also more than five-times above the provincial objective of 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
Fudge says, again as of 4pm, the rolling average was 139 ug/m3 at the Plaza 400 and 151 ug/m3 in College Heights.
In Vanderhoof, the meteorologist says the news is not much better, with the 24-hour rolling average for fine particulates at 110 ug/m3.
To check the provincial government's new BlueSky smoke forecasting system, click here.
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