BELLINGHAM — Wildfire smoke has choked portions of Whatcom County’s summers in recent years, impacting the quality of the air we all breathe.
The American Lung Association has noticed, handing Whatcom County a failing grade for its air quality for a second straight year and placing it among the top 25 most polluted counties in the United States based on daily particulate matter.
The Bellingham metropolitan area, which is basically all of Whatcom County, tied the Boise, Idaho, metro area (which includes a portion of eastern Oregon) for 24th most polluted by daily particulate matter, according to the American Lung Association’s 2022 State of the Air report, which was released Thursday, April 21.
Bellingham was one of 11 metro areas with populations smaller than a half-million people to make the 25 most polluted list, as only four metro areas smaller than Bellingham made the list. The area joined much larger metro areas, such as California’s Fresno (No. 1), the Bay Area (No. 3) and Los Angeles (No. 8). The Seattle-Tacoma metro area was No. 16, while the Portland (Ore.)-Vancouver (Wash.) area was No. 19. The Yakima and Spokane metro areas also made the dubious list from Washington state.
In addition to receiving an “F” for daily (or short-term) particulate matter, Whatcom County also received a “B” for its number of high ozone days in the report, which looked at air quality from 2018 to 2020. Whatcom’s grades were unchanged from last year’s American Lung Association report, which looked at air quality from 2017 to 2019.
Northwest Clean Air Agency spokesperson Seth Preston told The Bellingham Herald the grades weren’t all that unexpected.
“During that time period — 2018, ‘19 and ‘20 — two of those years, ‘18 and ‘20, we had some pretty massive impact from wildfires,” Preston told The Herald. “Those days really skewed the air quality in the short term.
“You take out those numbers from those days, as we have in calculations here by our monitoring people, and we’d be in the good range. We’d get an ‘A,’ so to speak. Unfortunately, the reality is on those days when we are impacted by wildfire smoke, that’s the reality that people have to deal with. That’s the air that we all have to struggle to breathe and obviously a difficult situation — it’s pretty awful.”
Preston’s point was shown in the American Lung Association’s report, which showed Whatcom had 14 days of high particulate air pollution from 2018 to 2020, including four days in the “orange” range (unhealthy for sensitive groups), nine days in the “red” range (unhealthy) and one day in the “purple” range (very unhealthy). Whatcom County did not have any “maroon” (or hazardous) days.
To assign grades for short-term pollution, the American Lung Association report said it weighed each day over the three years that air quality levels reached unhealthy levels (orange levels and above), factored in how bad the particulate pollution got and divided the total by three. Whatcom County’s weighted average was 6.5, nearly twice the 3.3 mark to receive a failing grade.
But the American Lung Association gave Whatcom County a passing grade (on a pass/fail scale) for year-round particle pollution, as the county’s total air quality over the course of each of the three years was substantially better than benchmarks set in the 2012 National Ambient Air Quality Standard for annually particulate pollution.
Despite that encouraging news, there are still those summer days when wildfire smoke pumps into the area, making the air simply unhealthy to breathe.
That’s not a trend Preston expects to change this summer or anytime soon.
“It looks like from everything I’ve seen that we’re probably going to be seeing smoke again this season,” Preston said. “It’s one of those things that’s such a tough situation to deal with, and it’s made worse by the fact the fact that there is really nothing to do about it, because the smoke is coming here from somewhere else.”
That somewhere else, in recent years, has included large wildfires in British Columbia, Oregon and California or the other side of the Cascades or even high-altitude smoke from fires in Siberia.
“It really depends on which way the wind is blowing,” Preston said. “It’s almost a situation where you have to hold on and be ready.”
That is particularly true for people who have health conditions that make them more susceptible to air pollution, such as lung diseases and cardiovascular diseases. The county has a high number of those, as the American Lung Association reported that among its 231,016 population, Whatcom has:
- 43,776 people younger than 18.
- 42,341 people 65 and older.
- 3,200 people with pediatric asthma.
- 18,112 people with adult asthma.
- 10,130 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, known as COPD.
- 114 people with lung cancer.
- 14,109 people with cardiovascular disease.
- 2,599 people who are pregnant.
- 26,423 people who are experiencing poverty.
“We all have to be mindful that this is the situation we’re facing now,” Preston said. “I hate to use a term like ‘the new normal,’ because it doesn’t seem normal. Normal is not having wildfire smoke.
“We all need to be mindful during that time of year, watch the forecast, watch for alerts from us. If people have preexisting conditions, such as lung and heart issues, they should talk to their medical providers and see if there is any medical advice they can give them. Also, when the smoke does come, people need to be mindful not to do anything that will add to the load.”
Ozone pollution
The American Lung Association assigned grades for daily ozone pollution in much the same way it did for short-term particulate pollution.
Whatcom County had two days in the past three years that ranked in the “orange” range, according to the report, giving it a weighted average of 0.7, which fell into the American Lung Association’s “B” grade range (weighted averages of 0.3 to 0.9).
“Obviously ‘B’ is not as good as we’d like, but it could be a whole lot worse,” Preston told The Herald. “What we can see from our data is it basically goes back to a couple of high ozone days in 2018. Generally, we’re pretty good for ozone in Bellingham.”
Ozone levels can tick up, Preston said, on particularly hot, sunny days, which can increase the levels of volatile organic compounds in the air.
“Ozone causes the same kind of issues, as far as health, as the wildfire smoke,” Preston said. “It’s a lung issue thing, and that’s why the Lung Association tracks it.”
