“But it’s not just (her),” Bautista said. “A lot of families talk about how they’re being impacted.”

Health issues and wage losses are often connected as people skip work or quit their jobs to care for themselves or their loved ones.

Addressing the problem

Experts and advocates say that reducing PM2.5 should start by addressing it at one of its primary sources: fossil fuel burning.

On Wednesday, the Biden administration and the U.S. EPA announced new emissions standards for passenger vehicles to reduce greenhouse gases and air pollutants such as PM2.5.

Once in the atmosphere, the dispersal of fine particulate matter is driven mainly by weather patterns, which can be altered by climate change.

“Major weather events played a huge role in air pollution in the last year,” said Christi Chester Schroeder, air quality science manager at IQAir. “With catastrophic weather events becoming more severe and frequent, projections indicate air quality issues will also become more severe.”

She added that drier and hotter climate conditions make vegetation “a tender bed” for wildfires.

“The interconnected nature of climate change and air quality is pretty complicated,” she said. “Wildfires are a natural phenomenon. However, they are becoming more frequent and more severe because of the effects of climate change, and what happened in Canada (last) year is a great example. As some regions are experiencing less and less rainfall, vegetation dries out and wildfires become more intense and more severe.”

The problem creates a vicious cycle: As climate change increases wildfire intensity and frequency, more aggressive wildfires release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. More heat-trapping gases contribute to hotter temperatures, which in turn dry out vegetation and allow for more wildfires.

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