‘My eyes were stinging’: New Yorkers navigate smoky air and soaring temperatures | New York

The sun shone faintly through the dense fog. The smell of burning wood hung thick in the air. Many New Yorkers wore masks as air quality dropped due to health warnings.

The National Weather Service has issued an air quality alert as pollution levels rise as smoke from raging fires in Canada drifts southward across much of the United States, reaching New York City and even across the Atlantic.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani called on citizens to stay indoors. “Every New Yorker should take precautions. Limit the time you spend outdoors, especially strenuous activities,” Mamdani said.

Mamdani noted that the city offers free KN95 masks at hundreds of locations citywide, including libraries, police stations and famous firehouses.

On Thursday evening, the city’s emergency management office encouraged New Yorkers not to stay outside for more than an hour. Department “Listen to your body” Published on X social media account. “If your eyes are watery, your throat is scratchy, or you have trouble breathing, reduce physical activity and go indoors.”

John, a 31-year-old lifelong Queens resident who suffers from asthma, was wearing a mask outside for safety at a theater company in Times Square. Her employer was encouraging her staff not to overexert themselves and take breaks in the theater to get some fresh air, “but at the end of the day we still need to be outside,” she said.

“You can taste the taste of burnt paper in the air,” said John, who asked that only his first name be used.

Next to John, a group of women were selling Broadway tickets.

“These guys, handing out pamphlets and stuff on the sidewalk, they’re out here all day with no guards,” he said. “The march of capitalism continues to advance.”

Smoky air combined with rising temperatures. Temperatures in the city rose above 32.2 degrees, and a “heat dome” helped trap stifling smoky air in other parts of the United States. in Detroit, closer to the burning Canadian forestsThe Motor City recorded the worst air quality in the world.

Rachel Smalter Hall, an editor at a book publisher in New York, received a text from her therapist on Thursday morning debating whether they should continue their in-person appointments despite the dangerous weather. Smalter Hall has asthma and said if he doesn’t take precautions he “could very easily get bronchitis.”

They decided to meet remotely.

“I noticed my eyes hurt when I was outside,” said Smalter Hall, a mother of two who lives in midtown Manhattan.

Wearing a face mask, Smalter Hall and her young daughter went to the Sephora store in the World Trade Center to try on makeup. He was worried about his children.

“It’s becoming increasingly common for the sky to change color due to pollution, and it really makes me worry about the future of air quality, the future of their health, and the future of the health of our planet,” he said.

In Brooklyn, Jackie Bell was on maternity leave with a two-month-old daughter and planned to send her three-year-old son to a camp in Prospect Park, but her husband needed a car.

So attending the camp meant that Bell, 35, had to take 30-minute walks in every direction of her home in the smog, with her children in tow. He preferred to keep his children at home. Bell’s mother flew in from New Jersey to help, “so I didn’t have a crazy toddler at home.”

“I’m very grateful. I feel very privileged knowing that despite the situation, some people may have to go out,” said Bell, who works in the healthcare industry.

Aaron Freedman, a graduate student studying American history, still had an N95 mask from the Covid-19 pandemic and was wearing it as he headed to meet his mother for lunch in Brooklyn.

He had seen people wearing masks the night before and the place “smelled so strongly of wildfire” that he decided he should wear a mask, too.

The smoke reminded Freedman, a lifelong New Yorker, of California, which frequently experiences wildfires. The only time he remembers a similar situation locally was in June 2023, when another Canadian wildfire caused New York’s air to turn toxic and the sky to turn orange.

“Growing up, this never happened,” Freedman, 34, said. “So yeah, climate change sucks.”