Monday, September 14, 2020

The Fires on West Coast are Causing Breathing Problems

 What is the Air Quality Index? It is the EPA's index for reporting air quality. Higher the number, worse the air is.

Today around here the AQI was 256.  That is in the dangerous category, and I can attest to that.  I stepped out of my front door this morning and immediately put on my mask I bought a couple years ago for shit just like this, and I am here to tell you it probably decreased the amount of smoke I was breathing by 50%. It flat hurt to breathe this morning. 

Here is how they describe dangerous:  Any exposure to the air, even for a few minutes, can lead to serious health effects on everybody. Avoid outdoor activities.

Tomorrow I will be staying home and changing ball joints on my daughters pickup, in preparation for a trip I will be making starting in Oct. The AQI forecast for my county tomorrow is 290 on the map, but when I hover the cursor over the map it says 240. Still too damn high. I have N99 masks for me and my helper.

Around here if you have central air conditioning I recommend you turn your fan on to run all the damn time. And buy a friggin hell of a lot of filters.  I  put a filtrete filter in mine Sunday about 3pm, and I looked at it today and I swear it is just as dirty as the one I replaced. So I went to Lowes in fresno, and they were 99% cleaned out of filters. So I went to Lowes in Madera and they were fully stocked. Go figure. So I bought 5.  But before that I went on amazon and bought 18 of them, should be here sunday, but i didn't want to wait.

Anyway, if you would like more info on AQI, here is a link that has several links of interest to you:

AQI Basics


No comments:

Post a Comment