Commonwealth_ The 2023 Canadian wildfire season was not kind to Canada, scorching more than 16 million hectares of forest, leaving thousands of people displaced, and shrouding Canadian and American cities in thick fog. The disaster did not only come with material discomfort but also produced negative implications for the environment, undoing all progress that had been made over time to combat pollution and compromising the health of the people.
According to a University of Chicago‘s Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) report, Canada’s worst air pollution since 1998 occurred in 2023. While some nations have legislated to curb noxious emissions of fine particulate matter, or PM 2.5, wildfires are quickly reversing the achievement. The particulates, less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, are able to penetrate deep into the lungs and even into the bloodstream and produce severe health effects.
The report calculates that the average Canadian would lose almost two years of life due to the upper estimate of severely polluted air in 2023 over a lifetime. The impact of PM 2.5 pollution varies with depth and range. Fine particle air pollution has also been associated with lung diseases like asthma, stroke, cardiovascular disease, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The study further reveals that the health effects of the wildfire smoke will also be lowball estimates, as conventional methods do not separate fire-borne PM 2.5 from others.
In 2023, Canadians had 9.2 micrograms of PM 2.5 per cubic meter, above the national standard of 8.8 micrograms per cubic meter and far above the World Health Organisation‘s five micrograms. Over half of the Canadians were exposed to air at or above national safety standards, and reducing the health risk from wildfire smoke grows more important.
Experts cite the ongoing global and national efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes, which have not yet stopped the raging wildfires, as the primary cause of air pollution. The traditional threat of wildfire assumes the intersection of climate change, public health, and environmental management. Increased heat, longer droughts, and alterations in climatic rhythms are only further boosting the frequency and intensity of fires more and more, so air pollution problems can only persist or even grow in the next two years.
Their impacts range from negative environmental impacts to impacts on human health. The report reveals that air pollution poses the largest global health hazard, exceeding more traditional peril factors such as mother and child undernourishment, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smoking. Current levels of exposure in Canada remind us of how climatically caused disasters such as forest fires can overnight erode the achievements made through policy effort and technological expertise in reducing pollution.
The relationship between fossil fuel consumption and poor air is also clear. Prevalent subsidisation and utilisation by fossil fuel industries enhance the possibility of adverse health impacts from air pollution. Even though applications of fossil fuels have already promoted energy security as well as economic prosperity in the past, their impacts on health and the environment are still enormous. Wildfire smoke from fires, in part caused by climate change resulting from aggregate carbon emissions, is a straightforward path along which the fossil fuel legacy is injuring Canadians. Unless the problem is solved, however, there must be a two-pronged response: more prevention and extinction of wildfires and, at the same time, ongoing decreases in industrial and urban emissions. Investment in clean energy, forestland planning, and community preparedness has the potential to reduce the impact of wildfires and PM 2.5 exposure. Public awareness and health surveillance must also be carried out to learn and react to the long-term health impact of air pollution and the well-being of populations.
The fire season of 2023 serves as a reminder that environmental progress is fleeting and can disappear in an instant. The Canadian experience serves to highlight that public health policy, pollution avoidance, and climate resilience have to be constructed so that air quality progress is not compromised by increasing wildfire and other climate change risks.
