Late last night, New Yorkers were served a public-health recommendation with a huge helping of déjà vu: “If you are an older adult or have heart or breathing problems and need to be outside,” city officials said in a statement, “wear a high-quality mask (e.g. N95 or KN95).”
It was, in one sense, very familiar advice—and also very much not. This time, the threat isn’t viral, or infectious at all. Instead, masks are being urged as a precaution against the thick, choking plumes of smoke from Canada, where wildfires have been igniting for weeks. The latest swaths of the United States to come into the crosshairs are the Midwest, Ohio Valley, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic.
The situation is, in a word, bad. Yesterday, New Haven, Connecticut, logged its worst air-quality reading on record; in parts of New York and Pennsylvania, some towns have been shrouded in pollutants at levels the Environmental Protection Agency deems “hazardous”—the most severe designation on its list. It is, to put it lightly, an absolutely terrible time to go outside. And for those who “have to go outdoors,” says Linsey Marr, an environmental engineer at Virginia Tech, “I’d strongly recommend wearing a mask.”
The masking advice might understandably spark some whiplash. For the majority of Americans, face coverings are still most saliently a COVID thing—a protective covering meant to be worn when engaging in risky gatherings indoors. Now, though, we’re having to flip the masking script: Right now, it’s outdoor air that we most want to guard our airways against. In more ways than one, the best masking practices in this moment will require snubbing some of our basest COVID-fighting instincts.
The COVID masking mindset can, to be fair, still be helpful to game out the risks at play. Viral outbreaks and wildfires both introduce dangerous particles into the eyes and the airway; both can be blocked with the right barriers. The difference is the source: Pathogens travel…
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