Air quality monitoring in Manitoba must be improved, say experts | Forest lights in Canada

Since May, thousands of people have been forced to leave their homes because of the forest fires that have ravaged Manitoba. During this record season, the province declared the state of emergency twice to deal with the influx of people fleeing their home. (new window) In some cases, evacuations have taken place due to poor air quality.

This is not a problem that will disappearassures Christopher Pascoe, associate professor at the University of Manitoba. His research focuses on the impact of forest fire smoke on chronic respiratory diseases.

Manitoba has four air quality monitoring stations. Two of them are in Winnipeg, one in Brandon and one in Flon Flon. These stations measure the concentration of particles dangerous for health in the air.

Environment Canada uses these stations as well as sensors installed by residents through the province for its air quality forecasts.

Sarah Henderson, the scientific director for environmental health services at the British Columbia Research Center, believes that Manitoba will be able to improve its pollution map by developing its surveillance infrastructure.

Forest lights are very episodic and unpredictable. Four surveillance stations are not enough to give a complete image on the consequences of smoke.

The majority of environmental infrastructure Canada are concentrated in the south of the province, while in the North, there are very few stations outside the big cities of Flon Flon, Thompson and Churchill.

Environment Canada is based on forecasting models, on weather observers in airports and on satellite imagery to follow smoke and predict air quality in distant communities.

However, this could be more precise if there were sensors in these communitiesunderlines Sarah Henderson.

According to Christopher Pascoe, air quality can even vary between small distances.

Without access to these data, it is more difficult to understand the impact that poor air quality has on health, especially in the North where vulnerable populations live near these fireshe specifies.

Foresee smoky

Environment Canada is trying to increase the number of air quality stations and sensors in northern Manitoba.

We already have a few tools, but it would be beneficial to have more stationsexplains Crawford Luke, a meteorologist at Environment Canada.

However, there are limits, because often the sensors need Wi-Fi and electricity to return the data necessary to calculate air quality. ‘Environment Canada hopes to overcome this obstacle in distant communities.

The province also plans to install sensors in strategic places, as in communities frequently affected by fires, but no precision on this project has been communicated so far.

In the meantime, Environment Canada is trying to fill the holes in its air quality monitoring network by encouraging communities to install their own sensors.

This network had initially been set up to control the pollution caused by traffic and industries, but these instruments are also important to assess the impacts of smoke on health.

With information from Santiago Arias Orozco