Commentary: Air quality disasters aren’t going away. Here’s how we should protect ourselves

As California residents, we are all too familiar with the orange skies that plagued the East Coast last week from Canadian wildfires and just hit the Midwest. And we have faced the plague of poor outdoor air quality many times while doing extensive public health work in cities, such as India’s capital New Delhi, that are among the most polluted in the world. The pandemic drew global attention to the impact of air quality on health, with a focus on pathogens that spread indoors.

But hazy skies remind us that the outdoors pose an equal, if not worse, threat.