Canton City Public Health: Stark County's air quality likely to return to normal Friday
CANTON – Stark County's air quality should return to normal Friday after reaching its worst level earlier this week since at least 2004, health officials said.
Canton City Public Health Air Pollution Control Director Terri Dzienis said the agency anticipated air quality would continue to improve after hitting hazardous levels Wednesday night as smoke from wildfires in Canada polluted the air across the Midwest.
AirNow.gov reported that Canton's air quality was at a "very unhealthy" level as of noon Thursday with a score of 227. The index rates air quality on a scale from zero to 500, with a score of more than 300 meaning air quality is hazardous.
Canton's score went above 300 Wednesday night before dropping Thursday morning.
Dzienis said data from Canton City Public Health showed these were the highest numbers the area had seen in at least 19 years.
She said weather can play a role in the way the smoke affects air quality.
"It is related to the weather patterns, where the wind is blowing, the type of weather we have to cause that particulate to come down to the ground level versus staying up in the atmosphere," Dzienis said.
Canton City Health Commissioner James Adams extended an Air Quality Alert Thursday morning that had been issued for the Stark County earlier this week. The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency also extended its statewide Air Quality Advisory Thursday and said in a news release it expected air quality levels to remain in the unhealthy for sensitive groups to very unhealthy ranges.
Canton City Public Health encouraged those with heart or lung disease, older adults, children and pregnant women to avoid outdoor physical activities and advised that everyone limit their time outside and avoid strenuous outdoor activities in a Facebook post Thursday morning.
Smoke contains fine particles that can get in a person's eyes and respiratory system, causing symptoms such as burning eyes, runny nose or bronchitis, according to AirNow. These particles can also agitate chronic heart and lung diseases and have been linked to premature death in some with those conditions.
Short-term smoke exposure is not usually a major risk to healthy people, AirNow says.
Dzienis recommended individuals familiarize themselves with AirNow or download the mobile app and start paying attention to air quality on a regular basis.
"This is kind of unprecedented," she said. "It's not like we experience this on a regular basis, but air quality does change throughout the day. So on hot days the ozone might be high, if the weather is kind of more stagnant, there might be a couple of hours in the day where you shouldn't really be hanging out outside doing strenuous activities, especially if you're in the sensitive group, which is your children, your older adults, people with lung and heart disease."
To see the latest air quality readings, visit www.airnow.gov.
Reach Paige at 330-580-8577, pmbennett@gannett.com or on Twitter @paigembenn.
This article originally appeared on The Repository: When will Canton air quality return to normal?
