Poor air quality affects northwest Indiana, Chicago flights, White Sox game
CHICAGO (CBS) – The dangerous air alert for much of the northeast and even parts of the Chicago area caused the closure of schools, the grounding of planes, and the postponement of a White Sox game in New York.
CBS 2's Charlie De Mar had more on the poor air quality's far-reaching effects.
There has been a haze overhead in Chicago and other parts of the region the past couple of days, but nothing like what New York is experiencing. The wildfire smoke has delayed and even canceled some flights at both of Chicago's airports.
The air quality was so bad in New York that the Yankees game on Wednesday against the White Sox was postponed. The thick haze was visible during Tuesday's broadcast.
"I was planning on running outside but I live on Long Island in New York and it is, let me show you the window. That's what's going on," said Tesla Carrasquillo in a TikTok.
Carrasquillo lives in New York and is training for the Chicago Marathon. She planned to get outside for Global Running Day.
"It's all yellow," she said. "Everything is yellow."
Mother Nature had other plans.
"I took a 10-minute walk and it was awful," she said. "You feel it in your lungs, that it's burning. Your eyes sting and it feels like you are right in front of a barbeque."
A time lapse video taken from the World Trade Center shows just how quickly the air quality diminished. Millions are under air quality alerts as wildfire smoke from Canada continues to blanket parts of the U.S., including northwest Indiana.
"I think the greatest risk is going to be to those people are pre-existing lung disease," said Northwestern Medicine pulmonologist Dr. Benjamin Seides. "So people with asthma, emphysema, COPD."
Seides said there is also some risk to those who don't have pre-existing conditions.
"You may want to limit your time outside or avoid going outside altogether until the air quality improves or if you must be outside, using N95 masks that we became so familiar with in the COVID pandemic," he said.
Tesla added, "I have asthma. So it was a little hard on me. I can't imagine people who have really hard respiratory issues."
The National Weather Service expects the poor air quality to continue through Thursday for northwest Indiana.
Along with the White Sox-Yankees game, several other professional sporting events on the east coast were postponed due to the air quality.
