What This Smoky Summer Means for Kids

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The wildfire smoke blanketing cities this summer can be harmful for children, both physically and emotionally. But caregivers can take some steps to make things a little easier.

First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:

Little Lungs

On the day the sky turned orange, I woke up with a nosebleed. I have gotten only a handful of nosebleeds in my life. I’d slept on that night in June with my windows open, and those hours of exposure had apparently left my relatively young and healthy body disrupted. I was alarmed that this had happened to me. But I was also alarmed about what the haze might mean for people in more vulnerable bodies than mine.

As plumes of toxic smoke from Canadian wildfires have blanketed parts of America this summer, East Coasters and midwesterners are getting a dose of the environmental hazard that people on the West Coast (and around the world) have been dealing with for years, and extreme smoke days will likely continue in the months ahead. My iPhone’s weather app has warned me on several days this summer, including today, that the air in New York is “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”

Children are sensitive, in part because, simply put, they are little: Kids breathe in more air each minute than adults do. “High levels of particulate matter can get deep into lung fields” during a bad smoke day, which may cause adverse effects, Marissa Hauptman, a pediatrician at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, where she works on environmental health, told me. And children’s developing organs are more prone to injury. “The younger the child, the more vulnerable they are,” she said. Kids with existing health conditions, such as asthma or diabetes, or children born prematurely, can be especially at risk on smoky days. Rima Habre, an associate professor at the University of Southern California with expertise in environmental health, told me in an email that “cough, runny nose, itchy or burning eyes, wheezing or difficulty breathing, and irritation in their eyes and throats” are among the issues children may face after being exposed to wildfire smoke.

The Canadian fires are likely to continue raging this summer. Nearly 900 fires are currently burning in Canada, including about 560 that the Canadian government has marked “out of control.” As my colleague Caroline Mimbs Nyce has written, “millions of Americans will have to brace themselves for more extreme smoke days. For exactly how long depends on a number of factors, including, quite literally, which way the wind blows.”

Parents and caregivers cannot control the wind. But they can take steps to protect kids from toxic air. The best thing to do to reduce exposure—as you might’ve already guessed—is to stay indoors with windows closed. Having HEPA filters, or AC units with filters, can improve air quality in your home too, Hauptman said. If you’re driving long distances, she recommended using your car’s air-recirculation mode while running the AC. If children do need to go outside for short periods on smoky days, experts advise that kids old enough to wear masks wear well-fitting NIOSH-approved N95 masks.

Parents should stay abreast of air-quality changes in their area, and they should “prepare at least one clean air room in their residence,” Habre said. She noted that the EPA website airnow.gov offers free resources on how to set up a clean-air room, as well as reliable updates on air quality.

The physical effects of smoke can be hard on small children, but so can the emotional ones. In addition to the terror of hearing about the fires, downstream impacts such as canceled days at camp can be difficult. Smoke is cutting into the summer rituals that give children’s days meaning, texture, and fun. Hauptman said that it’s important to avoid saturating kids with scary images and news stories. Caregivers should reinforce to children that, in spite of the bad circumstances, there are people helping: Talking with kids about the firefighters, nurses, and others keeping the community safe can be a balm, Hauptman added.

When the air outside is toxic, parents need to consider a number of factors, including their children’s age and health conditions. Kids are often active, and the time they spend outdoors running and playing can be great for their health. But on bad-air days, that calculus changes. These types of decisions aren’t easy, but they are, and will remain, the reality as parents consider choices about smoke, extreme heat, and COVID. “I think we’re going to be facing more and more days where you’re going to have to weigh your risk tolerance and think about how the environment is directly impacting your health,” Hauptman told me.

Smoky days are especially brutal when they coincide with the hottest days. And both can disproportionately affect those with fewer resources. Families that can afford reliable air-conditioning and air filters will be able to stay relatively insulated from heat and smoke, Hauptman noted. Households without AC or filters, meanwhile, are in a difficult position. Many schools have solid resources in place to handle smoke, but others don’t have up-to-date systems. Toxic air, coupled with rising temperatures, is a severe health concern—and it’s also “an environmental-justice issue,” Hautpman said.

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P.S.

Today, I wrote about hard decisions early in life. Recently, I read a book about hard decisions at the late stages of life that moved me: Don DeLillo’s Zero K. In one passage that has stayed with me, a character reflects on the small, beautiful elements that make up a life. She describes a shower to her stepson: “I think about drops of water,” she says. “I think about drops of water. How I used to stand in the shower and watch a drop of water edge down the inside of the sheer curtain. How I concentrated on the drop, the droplet, the orblet, and waited for it to assume new shapes as it passed along the ridges and folds, with water pounding against the side of my head.”

— Lora

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.