Wildfire smoke is as bad as it feels—and getting worse

It’s wildfire season in the West, with the San Francisco area under air quality alerts for part of the past week. Devastating wildfires in California have become all too common in recent years, and three of the state’s five deadliest wildfires happened since 2017. But this year also saw huge swaths of the Midwest, Northeast, and Mid-Atlantic affected by wildfire smoke coming from Canada. If you feel like you’ve been stuck inside an awful lot lately because the air is too smoky to go out, it’s definitely not just you: New research shows the serious impact increasing wildfires are having on our air quality—and our lives.