The thick and dirty smoke drifting from the raging wildfires in Canada gave New York City a distinction that no one would desire — the Big Apple was ranked as having the worst air quality in the world for major cities during part of the day on Wednesday.
That’s the word from Plume Labs, an air monitoring company owned by AccuWeather.
New York City reached an Air Quality Index, or AQI, of 304 in the early afternoon Wednesday — “far surpassing the AQI of Delhi, India, which had a maximum AQI of 199 in the (previous) 24 hours,” AccuWeather reported.
Other major U.S. cities also had worse air quality Wednesday than notoriously polluted areas of India and the United Arab Emirates, according to the Plume Labs data.
AccuWeather said New Haven, Connecticut, had an AQI reading of 273, and Philadelphia spiked to 223 at one point on Wednesday.
AQI numbers of 301 or higher are classified as “hazardous” — the worst rating on the air quality scale that is used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Numbers that high will “trigger health warnings of emergency conditions,” and “the entire population is even more likely to be affected by serious health effects,” the EPA says.
“AQI values between 201 and 300 trigger a health alert, meaning everyone may experience more serious health effects,” the EPA says.
A man talks on his phone as he looks through the haze at the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., Wednesday, June 7, 2023. Intense Canadian wildfires are blanketing the northeastern U.S. in a dystopian haze, turning the air acrid, the sky yellowish gray and prompting warnings for vulnerable populations to stay inside. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)AP
Was the air in N.J. worse than NYC?
The Plume Labs air quality rankings don’t include towns or cities in New Jersey. But the Garden State experienced its worst air quality day on record Wednesday, with some air monitoring stations reporting AQI numbers that were even worse than New York City and Philadelphia.
By 4 p.m. Wednesday, the AQI in Hillsborough in Somerset County spiked to 486, Elizabethport in Union County hit 476, and Piscataway in Middlesex County reached 467, according to hourly data from the EPA. That’s on a scale of 0 to 500.
When air quality numbers are above 300, the EPA recommends that everyone — not just people with breathing problems — should stay inside with the doors and windows shut.
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Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com.
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