• The US West Coast has the worst air quality in the world due to wildfire smoke across California, Oregon, and Washington.
• Maps of air-quality index measurements show hazardous levels of particulate matter from wildfire smoke across the entire West Coast.
• Research has linked particulate matter from wildfires to heart and lung problems, increased hospital visits, and worse flu seasons.
• The EPA recommends residents stay indoors with filtered air, keep physical activity levels low, and wear an N95 respirator if they have to go outside.

The West Coast has the worst air quality on Earth right now, as nearly 100 active wildfires — including three of California’s four biggest ever recorded — spew smoke.

Particulate matter from the smoke has made the air unhealthy to breathe all along the coast, as this map from air-quality monitoring company PurpleAir shows.

PurpleAir

The numbers in the colored circles indicate the air quality index (AQI) detected by various monitoring sensors across the country. AQI is a metric measuring the level of pollutants in the air and how hazardous those levels are to human health, as determined by guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency.

A higher AQI indicates more pollutants in the air and a greater health hazard. The EPA considers any AQI above 150 to be unhealthy for all people. Anything above 300 is considered a “health warning of emergency conditions.”

The EPA does not make recommendations for AQI levels above 500, since they’re “beyond index.”

But PurpleAir’s monitors around Salem, Oregon, reported AQIs as high as 758 on Friday morning.

Those levels are comparable to some of the worst days for air quality in Dehli, India — the world’s most polluted city, according to the nonprofit Berkeley Earth.

Satellite imagery shows fires and smoke along the US West Coast, September 8, 2020. CIRA/NOAA Goes – West

None of PurpleAir’s monitors at other locations across the globe were reporting AQIs anywhere near 400 on Friday morning.

Fires have burned millions of acres and forced mass evacuations

California has been battling blazes for several weeks following a dry lightning storm on August 16 that ignited hundreds of fires. The state’s Doe Fire in the Mendocino National Forest is now the biggest in history at more than 471,000 acres. California’s third- and fourth-biggest fires ever are currently burning, too.

Firefighters keep an eye on the Creek Fire along state Highway 168, September 6, 2020, in Shaver Lake, California. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo.

In California, more than 3.1 million acres have burned so far — an area more than 100 times the size of San Francisco and far more than any other year on record. Fire season doesn’t normally peak until late September.

In Oregon, meanwhile, fires spanning more than 1 million acres have forced about 40,000 people to evacuate. Flames encroaching on the Portland metro area prompted Mayor Ted Wheeler to issue a Fire Emergency Order on Thursday evening.

More than 500,000 acres have burned in Washington.

In total across the West Coast this fire season, at least 25 people have died.

The fires have spread quickly because forests are dried out by years of record heat. Some blazes are emitting so much smoke that they create their own weather systems, and the haze has tinted the skies orange and red over San Francisco and other parts of the coast.

Particulate matter from smoke has serious health consequences

The AQI numbers on PurpleAir’s map refer to the quantities of tiny particulate matter in the air — specifically, particles that measure 2.5 micrometers across or less. These are known as PM2.5.

Wildfire smoke carries many of these invisible particles, which come from the buildings and vegetation fires burn as well as chemical reactions in the gases it produces.

When humans inhale these particles, they can penetrate deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream. Research has connected PM2.5 pollution to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and premature death. In healthy people, it can irritate the eyes and lungs and cause wheezing, coughs, or difficulty breathing.

The map below, from the EPA’s air-quality monitoring website, shows a band of dangerous PM2.5 pollution along the West Coast (similar to what PurpleAir is reporting). The circles are color-coded by AQI ranges: Green indicates good air quality, while maroon indicates “hazardous” conditions with an AQI above 300.

AirNow.gov

“Decades of research have shown that elevated air pollution exposure is associated with a number of adverse health impacts, including compromised immune systems,” Erin Landguth, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s School of Public and Community Health Sciences, told The New York Times.

She added that research indicates that “after bad fire seasons, one would expect to see three to five times worse flu seasons.”

A 2017 study found that hospitals saw a 7.2% increase in admissions for respiratory issues following wildfire smoke events that produced two or more days of moderate PM2.5 pollution.

To reduce exposure to particulate matter, the EPA recommends people stay indoors with filtered air (ideally in a room with few windows or doors and an air purifier), keeping windows and doors closed. Physical activity levels should remain low, and those who must go outside should wear an N95 respirator. Those masks have been in short supply this year, however, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said that in the last 24 hours, the state had “experienced unprecedented fire with significant damage and devastating consequences.”

“This could be the greatest loss of human lives and property due to wildfire in our state’s history,” she said at a news conference.

In Washington State, Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz said that a child had died in one of the state’s largest wildfires, the 163,00-acre Cold Springs fire. The blaze is burning mid-way between Spokane and Seattle. Franz didn’t offer details but said she was devastated by the death.

“The pain that family is going through is unfathomable,” she said.

In Oregon, wildfires burning east of the state capital tore through the small city of Lyons, killing Wyatte Tofte, 12, and his grandmother, Peggy Mosso, according to the boy’s father, Christopher Tofte. The boy’s mother, Angela Mosso, suffered severe burns and is in critical condition, he said.

And in Butte County, California, where the state’s deadliest fire on record killed 85 people and all but destroyed the town of Paradise two years ago, the remains of three people were found Wednesday after a wildfire burned through the area, Sheriff Kory Honea told reporters.

Two people were found at the same location, Honea said. The third was found elsewhere. Honea declined to provide additional details until the remains are identified.

In Southern Oregon, officials in the town of Talent told their 6,600 residents to stay outside the city limits because there’s scant electricity and it’s not safe stepping around fallen power lines.

While City Hall, the police department and other government buildings survived, there were whole neighborhoods and blocks of businesses completely gutted by the blaze.

“The fire ripped through the core of our (Oregon Route) 99 corridor,” the main stretch of town, Talent Mayor Darby Ayers-Flood told NBC News. “Where it burned, it burned completely and totally. I’m exhausted and shocked by it.”

City officials were hoping that their fast-acting residents, who evacuated Tuesday and Wednesday, would keep deaths at zero.

“I believe that most everyone is safe, it could have been far worse,” Ayers-Flood said.

Brown enacted a fire conflagration act for the first time in state history, with at least 35 fires scorching more than 300,000 acres of land in Oregon.

“Our number-one priority right now is saving lives,” Brown said on Twitter Wednesday. During the news conference, she said that six towns in Marion, Lane, and Jackson counties have been “substantially destroyed.”

Meanwhile, up the road in Medford, residents in the southern end of the city were ordered to evacuate on Wednesday as the Almeda Fire made its way north.

And to make matters worse, another blaze dubbed the Obenchain Fire was gaining strength north of Medford, according to Jackson County Emergency Management, prompting more evacuation orders.

“Level 3 (evacuation order), that’s as serious as it gets,” Rudy Owens, spokesman for the Oregon Office of State Fire Marshal, said of the emergency actions taken in and around Medford.

Huge swaths of tinder-dry brush across the western U.S. were ablaze on Wednesday as firefighters battled flames, hot weather and high winds.

There were 14,000 firefighters on the lines in California as 28 wildfires burned out of control, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

Near the Oregon border, a fire that began Monday had exploded to 30,000 acres by Wednesday and destroyed an estimated 150 homes in the small community of Happy Camp, the U.S. Forest Service said.

In the central part of the state, the Creek Fire had consumed nearly 167,000 acres by Wednesday evening, officials said. In Butte County, the blaze that killed three people, the Bear Fire, prompted evacuation warnings for part of the town of Paradise.

Remarkably, three other fires still burning on Wednesday — the August Complex, SCU Lightning Complex and LNU Lightning Complex blazes — were classified as the second, third and fourth biggest wildfires in state history, firefighters said Wednesday.

Before Wednesday, wildfires had killed eight people in California, including five during the LNU fire, which was sparked by a rare summer thunderstorm last month. The state has seen a record 2.5 million acres burn this year.

While these flames were burning well outside the state’s biggest cities, their smoke had enveloped large urban cores.

An eerie orange and brown glow filled the sky above the Bay Area, a mixture of fog and smoke from the fires that cast San Francisco in a perpetual rust colored haze on Wednesday.

Citing the “unprecedented” and “historic fire conditions” in California, 10 national forests were ordered closed on Wednesday, meaning that all 18 national forests in the state were shut down.

“These temporary closures are necessary to protect the public and our firefighters, and we will keep them in place until conditions improve and we are confident that National Forest visitors can recreate safely,” Regional Forester Randy Moore said in a statement.

Wildfires in the state of Washington also continued to burn on Wednesday, with more than 576,400 acres charred since a series of blazes were touched off on Labor Day, said state Department of Natural Resources spokesman Joe Smillie.

In the small community of Malden, near the Idaho state line, most of the town was destroyed by a fast-moving blaze that swept through the area Monday. Larry Frick, who stayed and fought the fire as it surrounded his home, compared the scene Wednesday to a war zone.

“There were explosions going off non-stop and some really big ones where I could feel it shake the ground,” he said in an interview.

Frick said he tried to save his neighbor’s house, but the wind-whipped flames roared through its facade, reducing the structure to rubble in what seemed like minutes. The fire, which has destroyed 98 buildings, had grown to nearly 18,000 acres by Wednesday, fire officials said.

WASHINGTON — A report commissioned by federal regulators overseeing the nation’s commodities markets has concluded that climate change threatens U.S. financial markets, as the costs of wildfires, storms, droughts and floods spread through insurance and mortgage markets, pension funds and other financial institutions.

“A world wracked by frequent and devastating shocks from climate change cannot sustain the fundamental conditions supporting our financial system,” concluded the report, “Managing Climate Risk in the Financial System,” which was requested last year by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and set for release Wednesday morning.

Those observations are not entirely new, but they carry new weight coming with the imprimatur of the regulator of complex financial instruments like futures, swaps and other derivatives that help fix the price of commodities like corn, oil and wheat. It is the first wide-ranging federal government study focused on the specific impacts of climate change on Wall Street.

Perhaps most notable is that it is being published at all. The Trump administration has suppressed, altered or watered down government science around climate change as it pushes an aggressive agenda of environmental deregulation that it hopes will spur economic growth.

The new report asserts that doing nothing to avert climate change will do the opposite.

“This is the first time a government entity has looked at the impacts of climate change on financial markets in the U.S.,” said Robert Litterman, the chairman of the panel that produced the report and a founding partner of Kepos Capital, an investment firm based in New York. “Rather than saying, ‘What’s the science?’ this is saying, ‘What’s the financial risk?’ ”

The commodities regulator, which is made up of three Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom were appointed by President Donald Trump, voted unanimously last summer to create an advisory panel drawn from the world of finance and charged with producing a report on the effects of the warming world on financial markets. The initial proposal for the report came from Rostin Behnam, one of the panel’s two Democrats, but the report is written by dozens of analysts from investment firms including Morgan Stanley, S&P Global and Vanguard; oil companies BP and ConocoPhillips; and agricultural trader Cargill, as well as academic experts and environmental groups.

It includes recommendations for new corporate regulations and the reversal of at least one Trump administration policy.

“It was shocking when they asked me to do this,” Litterman said. “This is members of the entire community involved in financial markets saying with one voice, ‘This is a serious problem, and it has to be addressed.’”

A White House spokesman, Judd Deere, declined Tuesday to comment on the report because the White House had not yet seen it.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a conservative research organization, who served as economic adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “This was initiated by the Trump administration. It is the only document of its type.”

He added, “If you’re denying this exists, you don’t ask for a report on it.”

The Republican chairman of the CFTC, Heath Tarbert, acknowledged the risk of climate change, but he noted that the report also detailed what the regulators called “transition risk” — the financial harm that could befall the fossil fuel industry if the government enacted aggressive policies to curb carbon dioxide pollution.

“I appreciate Commissioner Behnam’s leadership on convening various private sector perspectives on the important topic of climate risk,” Tarbert said in a statement. “The subcommittee’s report acknowledges that ‘transition risks’ of a green economy could be just as disruptive to our financial system as the possible physical manifestations of climate change, and that moving too fast, too soon could be just as disorderly as doing too little, too late. This underscores why it is so important for policymakers to get this right.”

The authors of the report acknowledged that if Trump is reelected, his administration is all but certain to ignore the report and its recommendations.

Instead, they said they saw the document as a policy road map for a Joe Biden administration.

Biden’s climate policy proposals are the most ambitious and expensive ever embraced by a presidential candidate, and most of them would meet resistance in Congress. But even without legislation, he could press forward with regulatory changes. Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor who is seen as a top contender to be Treasury secretary in a Biden administration, has called for financial regulators to treat climate change as a significant risk to the financial system.

In calling for climate-driven policy changes, the report’s authors likened the financial risk of global warming to the threat posed by the coronavirus today and by mortgage-backed securities that precipitated the financial crash in 2008.

One crucial difference, they said, is that in the case of climate change, financial volatility and loss are likely to be spread out over time, as they hit different regions and markets. Insurance companies could withdraw from California in the wake of devastating wildfires, and home values could plummet on coastlines and in floodplains. In the Midwest, banks could limit loans during or after extended droughts that drastically lower crop yields. All of those problems will be exacerbated by climate change, but they are unlikely to hit all at once.

“Financial markets are really good at managing risk to help us provide credit, so that the economy can flourish,” said Leonardo Martinez-Diaz, an editor of the report who served as senior official at the Treasury Department during the Obama administration. But, he added, the system breaks down “when it’s no longer able to manage risk, when it’s invisible, it’s not captured by the price of stocks.”

“That’s what we saw in the financial crisis of 2008, and it’s as relevant now on climate change as it was then on mortgage-backed securities,” he said.

Among the first of those risks already pervading the markets, the report’s authors say, are falling home prices and rising mortgage default rates in regions where wildfires and flooding are worsening.

“Climate change is linked to devaluing home values,” said Jesse Keenan, an editor of the report and a professor of real estate at Tulane University in New Orleans.

“If in your town, your house is devalued, that makes it harder for your local government to raise money,” he said. “That’s one set of risks that could lead to a contagion and broader instability across financial markets.”

Extreme weather could cause swings in agricultural commodity prices, the report warns, and climate-spurred market volatility could afflict pension and retirement funds, which invest across a range of asset classes.

“Climate change is one of the top three risks to our fund,” said Divya Mankikar, an author of the report and an investment manager at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the country’s biggest public pension fund. “We pay pension and health benefits to over 2 million current and former state employees. So the payout is decades out.”

The report makes several concrete recommendations for inoculating the financial system against potential harm.

It emphasizes the need to put a price on carbon emissions, which is often done either by taxing or through an emissions trading system that caps carbon emissions and allots credits that polluters can buy and sell under that cap.

The report calls for the reversal of a proposed rule being put forward by the Trump administration’s Labor Department that would forbid retirement investment managers from considering environmental consequences in their financial recommendations.

“If there’s any class of investors that should be thinking about the long run, it’s retirement funds and pension funds,” said Nathaniel Keohane, an author of the report and an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group.

The report suggests that the Financial Stability Oversight Council, a Treasury Department-led body created in the wake of the 2008 crisis, incorporates climate risks into its annual report and its communications with Congress. It suggests that the Federal Reserve and other major financial regulators join international coalitions that focus on climate threats.

The report also suggests that bank regulators should roll out a climate risk stress testing pilot program. Such stress tests, which assess how bank balance sheets and the broader system would fare in bad climate-related economic scenarios, have been under development in Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

The authors also recommend that another financial regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission, strengthen its existing requirements that publicly traded companies disclose the risks to their bottom lines associated with climate change.

Coca-Cola has noted in its financial disclosures that water shortages driven by climate change pose a risk to its production chains and profitability. But many other companies “just check the box” on that requirement, Keohane said.

Such disclosures should also include the risk to companies’ bottom lines posed by future policies designed to mitigate climate change, such as taxes or regulations on carbon dioxide pollution, which could hurt fossil fuel producers.

“If carbon risk is priced, this will add cost to the oil and gas industry,” said Betty Simkins, a report author and professor of finance at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. “But they need to be prepared for this. It’s better for the companies to disclose the risk and be as financially fit as possible.”