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Comment by jnsie | Hacker News Reader

In NYC and was just outside. Large percentage of people wearing masks. Smells like a fire pit. Looks like blade runner. Interesting times.

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If you go outside in NYC you should definitely be wearing an N95 or better. Avoid going out if you can. Current AQI here is 400+ aka "Hazardous". It's currently sunny at the park near me: https://imgur.com/a/DLhxEWL

Is there a significant difference between going outside and staying indoors in a home without any filtration?

yes, you'll find out first hand if you buy a PM2.5 meter and measure locally in your environment. We have a battery powered one we'd take on trips with us and in the car. Buy a Bosch HEPA cabin filter for your car too, it makes a measurable difference.

Seems like a good meter? I can't find any reliable indicator of which might be worth the trouble.

I bought smartmi PM 2.5 meter 6 months ago. It is very simple just power button, brightness and display. I watched YouTube video where it was positively reviewed.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EIjHR2h

yah it's hard to verify whether or not the thing has true absolute accuracy. However once I started experimenting in real world scenarios where I was able to corroborate my own subjective interpretation of my senses the numbers did correlate and scale proportionally as hoped. When it was noticeably smoky outside the numbers registered high, the higher the smoke smell the numbers reflected proportionally so. I would do experiments like vacuuming and seeing what showed up. Cooking with smoke being generated, the numbers would grow.

Mine has some VOC mode too, when I took the thing to the gas station that number went way up which was pretty illuminating how much VOCs we breathe in at the pump.

Another angle to the experimentation was with and without the HEPA filter being ran. When smoke would infiltrate the indoor numbers would be like 10 or 12. Run the HEPA for say 20 min the numbers get down to 2 or 3. To me that thing was doing what I expected and served us well in the wildfires.

I'm pretty sure I was smelling the smoke when the AQI here was ~30 yesterday.

Some AQI measures are not realtime. You were probably looking at a 24-hour average like airnow.gov or something (as opposed to something like PurpleAir which is realtime)

What is the “hazard” though? Is going outside really that much worse than hanging within a few feet of a campfire for hours? Obviously PM 2.5 is bad, but the actual amount of hazard from acute exposure hasn’t been contextualized, for me at least.

>Is going outside really that much worse than hanging within a few feet of a campfire for hours?

It's more like you're surrounded by campfires except there are no fires, only smoke, and no way of turning away or escaping from it.

Ok sure, but that’s not really answering the question of whether or not acute exposure to campfires is worse than acute exposure to wildfire smoke.

I've never found myself coughing next to campfires or BBQ's.

Today (NYC) I went outside briefly and started coughing within a couple of minutes, and then my eyes started watering.

It's nothing like being by a campfire. It's way worse. Campfire smoke goes straight up, or if it's windy nobody stands with the smoke blowing directly in their face for minutes/hours.

Acute exposure is generally a concern for individuals with respiratory conditions e.g. asthma.

What are you asking though? Are you asking how a blast of heavy smoke compares to a constant cover of fine smoke? A lot all at once or a little over a long period of time are both bad.

With a campfire, you can always scoot your chair back if you are getting too much smoke, but you are probably getting much more smoke all at once. With a wildfire, you can't escape it and normal activities like going for a jog or walking to your office become a problem.

> hanging within a few feet of a campfire for hours

is actually bad though. You may not feel it, but as an asthmatic, I can tell you quite certainly that this is dosing you with PM2.5 unless you have a really clean burning convective fire or smokeless pit.

But that's why people want to know. Obviously it sucks for you as an asthmatic, but if the new risk is only as bad as some old risk they're OK with, then they don't need to worry about the new risk.

I know nothing about this subject but if these fires uncontrollably burn through land, they're not going to show mercy for anything in their path. A controlled campfire has wood and leaves. A large scale fire could burn up really bad material like rubber and other things that emit chemicals.

Well, it's probably an outlier on the general trend on a ten-year timescale, most climate stories on a regional basis seem to fall into that category. Of course, ten years from now we'll have something worse... But that's not something we can really control, any action we take on climate even the most drastic won't have any real effect for about 30-70 years at least.

Sci-fi interpretation: Humans are a highly aggressive species derived from predatory apes, given to unpredictable violence, not very capable of long-term planning. Quarantined by alien civilizations for that reason.

> But that's not something we can really control, any action we take on climate even the most drastic won't have any real effect for about 30-70 years at least.

That is the wrong way to think about it. Any action we take now is affecting all future years. Replacing fossil fuels with renewables not only reduces carbon emissions this year but also over all the next years. Additionally, taking action now tips the economies of scales further. Renewables come cheaper, fossil investment unattractive.

Thus I think the best way to face the looming catastrophy is to act more decisively and invest much more heavily now.

Looks like Night of the Comet:

https://imgur.com/a/MYpreX5

Source images:

http://www.ap-tyler.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Night-O...

https://www.earthcam.com/share/temp_images/1686190731284.jpg

Is it unusual? My first year here

Yes, quite unusual.

It's pretty much unprecedented.

Unprecedented for the east coast. It's a reality we've been living with on the west coast for the last few years already.

This is the thickest, longest lasting, and furthest traveling wild fire smoke I've ever experienced. I Left the windows open to sleep and I woke up with a voice two octaves lower.

Was worse in SF a few years ago

To my research, SF AQI has never topped 249. New York just topped out at 342 today with no sign of letting up. I won't dispute that SF wildfire season being so frequent and long lasting, there's been nasty periods, but no it's factually incorrect that SF has ever been at one time worse than what's happening in NYC right now.

I'll admit - looked at the New York ones for today after making this comment and it looked higher than I had seen in SF. I was basing on what I had seen on purpleair yesterday.

e: Although I do remember a few days where I believe it might have broke 300 on purpleair

I double checked my chat messages from when this was happening in SF and it was definitely above 300 on purple air during the 2020 SF fires.

Checking my logs from the CZU Fire Complex back in 2020, the AQI at my house in the SF Peninsula topped out at 766. It was pretty bad.

one of the sensors in SF right now

""" On June 7th, 2023, 4:12:06 PM PDT 10 Minute Average US EPA PM2.5 AQI is now 320 Sensor: Bill Nye the AQI """ https://map.purpleair.com/1/m/i/mAQI/a10/p604800/cC0?select=...

Uh, that's clearly an outlier. None of the other dozens of sensors around it are registering anything higher than 42.

Portland hit well over 500 in 2020, and I believe I remember some peak readings of around 800, but I can't find them now.

https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2020/09/portlands-air-qualit...

Here's the data for the Bay Area from 2020 - which was considered a particularly bad year for wildfire smoke, and is also the most recent year it's caused particular problems here. Peak levels were only around 200, although it was admittedly somewhat prolonged: https://www.baaqmd.gov/about-air-quality/current-air-quality...

I think this is maybe not directly comparable with purple air, was able to find old chat messages I had sent showing that the AQI in my neighborhood in SF was upwards of 300 on September 11th, 2020

Currently 480 in the area of Philly my parents live.

I believe we started suffering a long streak back in 2017 where it was back to back years of suffering. Last year we got off easy because we got hit by some lucky rains that put an end to things. Still gotta get through this summer and see how things go.

Pretty normal for California the past few years...

It has broken a 1981 record. Never been this bad. No that’s not normal.

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