Denver’s Air Quality Right Now = You Smoking 2 Cigarettes A Day

Martin Kuprianowicz | Post Tag for FireFire
The air quality in Denver, Colorado right now is bad — like smoking two cigarettes a day, bad. | Photo courtesy Facebook.

Smoke from wildfires in California is polluting the nation’s air big time, with smoke being seen and inhaled thousands of miles away. The air pollution as a result of the fires is so bad in Denver, Colorado right now, that for people living in the city, it’s about the equivalent of smoking two cigarettes a day.

Chris Tomer, a Colorado-based meteorologist reported on the Mile High City’s worrisome air quality in a Facebook post in which he wrote:

We’re each smoking 2 cigarettes per day in Denver. Current air pollution (specifically small particulate matter ppm2.5) suggests we’ve all now smoked over a pack of cigarettes in the last two weeks. Daily ppm2.5 are running 40-60 ug/m^3 depending on site. This is sometimes called “lung dust”.

That makes a pack of cigarettes in 10 days! But people living in Denver aren’t the only ones suffering right now…

The wildfires in California are causing problems all across the West, and smoke can be seen as far as Kansas. On Lake Tahoe, the mountains encircling the lake have temporarily vanished under a shroud of thick smoke.

Meanwhile, here at home base in Salt Lake City, Utah, we’ve been issued a poor air quality warning and you can’t even see the mountains across the valley from my house, which on a clear day are the first thing that pop out at you. Just look at the image below…

The Oquirrh Mountains are usually visible from this location when the entire valley isn’t shrouded in smoke. | Photo courtesy SnowBrains.

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