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Unhealthy Air Quality & Wildfire Safety Recommendations (Downloadable Training)

Anthony Poston, ARM, AIM

Whether it comes from your car's exhaust pipe, dirty smokestacks or a wildfire, air pollution can be deadly. Clean air is essential for healthy lungs. Smoke from wildfires can harm anyone nearby and even many miles downwind. Breathing smoke can shorten lives and cause heart attacks, asthma attacks and other dangerous health effects. Even healthy adults can risk coughing, wheezing, and difficulty breathing.

The following are contributors to unhealthy air:

  • Ozone

  • Particulate Matter

  • Nitrogen Dioxide

  • Sulfur Dioxide

  • Carbon Monoxide

  • Toxic Air Pollutants

  • Electric Utilities

  • Transportation

  • Residential Sources

  • Commercial and Industrial

  • Emergencies and Natural Disasters

  • Climate Change

Unhealthy Air Quality Computer Based Training
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Policy, Safety Tips (ENG & SPA),Computer Based Training for Employees (5 mins + certificates)

10 Steps to protect yourself from unhealthy air

  1. Check daily air pollution forecasts in your area

  2. Avoid exercising outdoors and the amount of time your child spends playing outdoors too when air quality is unhealthy.

  3. Always avoid exercising near high-traffic areas. Even when air quality forecasts are green, the vehicles on busy highways can create high pollution levels up to one-third a mile away.

  4. Use less energy in your home as sources of energy creates air pollution.

  5. Encourage your child's school to reduce exposure to school bus emissions.

  6. Walk, bike or carpool. Use buses, subways, light rail systems, commuter trains or other alternatives to driving your car.

  7. Don't burn wood or trash. Burning firewood and trash are among the major sources of particle pollution (soot) in many parts of the country.

  8. Use hand-powered or electric lawn care equipment rather than gasoline-powered.

  9. Don't allow anyone to smoke indoors and support measures to make all public places tobacco-free.

  10. Check out the American Lung Association for more: www.lung.org/policy-advocacy/healthy-air-campaign

Wildfire safety recommendations

  • Stay aware of the air quality where you live and where you may travel.

  • Stay indoors as much as possible with windows and doors closed

  • Tuck damp towels along the bottom of doors and windows to block outdoor air. Use your clean room with the air purifier running

  • Run your air conditioner on “recirculate” to help filter out some of the particles coming indoors from outside

  • Do not run evaporative “swamp coolers” or whole house fans (which pull outdoor air inside)

  • Seek shelter elsewhere if you do not have an air conditioner and it is too warm to stay inside with the windows closed

  • For more safety tips, visit: www.lung.org and www.cdc.gov/disasters