At least 16 municipalities across British Columbia exceeded provincial or federal air quality guidelines in 2021, according to an annual report mapping out pollutants across the province.
Set a forest ablaze and the tiny particles will get lofted into the air, forming a haze that spreads out over a vast area. At times, they can travel thousands of kilometres away on the wind. Take wildfire out of the equation and none of those three communities would have exceeded the provincial target, itself only an “intermediate” goal, according to Lam.
“We have that data that suggests that even at the prescription level, we see a spike. So imagine what that's doing in terms of exacerbations?” he said. In 2021, even the highest NO2 levels in B.C. — recorded at a Vancouver air quality monitoring station at Clark Drive — were well below B.C.’s air quality objective, according to the BC Lung Foundation report.
The communities worst hit by ground-level ozone in 2021 were Maple Ridge, Mission, Coquitlam, Hope and Chilliwack — all of which failed national air quality standards.