The Bay Area Air Quality Management District doesn't expect smoke drifting into the region from a trio of California wildfires to cause unhealthy air quality over the next two days, but the air district nonetheless issued an air quality advisory for Thursday and Friday.
Smoky skies could be visible in Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties, as well as in the East Bay, the agency said, but the Air Quality Index currently is measuring "moderate" air quality throughout the district.
Most of the smoke from the McFarland, Monument and River Complex fires is aloft, leading to less of an impact on air quality. The National Weather Service's forecast for Thursday and Friday, however, shows some near-surface smoke expected to pass through the North and East Bay.
If you don't see nor smell any smoke over the next couple of days, that won't be enough to assume you're in the clear of worse air quality.
"We can't go by whether or not we smell the smoke or not," Mary Prunicki, director of Air Pollution and Health Research at Stanford's Parker Center for Allergy and Asthma Research, told KCBS Radio’s Dan Mitchinson and Holly Quan on Thursday morning. "It's really the level of pollution in the air, and if we follow the Air Quality Index, we'll have a better idea of how it will impact our health."
If the air quality worsens over the next couple of days, Prunicki recommended staying indoors as much as possible while keeping doors and windows closed, as well as having an N95 mask handy for leaving your home. Maintain an eye on your indoor air quality to determine if you need a standalone air purifier or a filter for your central air conditioning. Prunicki added she always sets her car air conditioning to recirculate, so as to not breathe in traffic pollution.
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