The IQ Air Quality Index produces a daily live, major city ranking, and on June 28 at 7 p.m. ET, Toronto took one of the top spots on the list, with smoke from forest fires in parts of northeastern Ontario and Quebec hanging over the city.
For a brief period around 4 p.m. local time, Toronto was in first place as the worst city in the world for air quality, followed by Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
The thick smoke prompted Environment Canada to issue a warning for the Toronto area on June 28, advising that smoke plumes from fires over northeastern Ontario and Quebec were “resulting in deteriorated air quality.” Those “very high levels of air pollution” are expected to continue for the remainder of the day, improving in some areas by the end of the week.
“Exposure to air pollutants can result in various symptoms, such as irritated eyes, increased mucus production, coughing and difficulty breathing,” said the city, advising people to limit their outdoor activities and close their windows and doors, being mindful of exposure to excess heat.
Toronto suspended all outdoor activities at its early childhood learning and daycare centres, and moved city-run outdoor museum programs indoors on June 28.
As the day progressed into evening, Toronto trailed behind Chicago in first place, Dubai in second place, and Delhi, India, in third. U.S. cities Detroit and Minneapolis took fourth and fifth place respectively, largely due to drifting smoke blowing in from Canada’s out-of-control wildfires.
The federal weather agency said air quality and visibility due to wildfire smoke “can fluctuate over short distances and can vary considerably from hour to hour.”
Fires burning in northern Quebec, in combination with a low pressure system over the eastern Great Lakes, are to blame for smoke travelling into northern Michigan and across Wisconsin and Chicago, according to meteorologists.
Between Jan. 1 and June 26, data from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre indicates that 76,129 square kilometres of Canadian land including forests has burned across the country. As of June 28, there were 482 active fires across the country, including 240 burning out of control.
One-quarter of the fires currently burning are in Quebec.