The air quality in Toronto is currently about five times worse today than it was yesterday, as wildfire smoke continues to choke the city and surrounding area.<\/p>\n
In an interview with CTV News, Peter Kimbell, warning preparedness meteorologist with Environment Canada, said a measurement of PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) from west Toronto recorded this morning at 8 a.m. came in at 296 micrograms per metre cubed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is definitely worse than it was yesterday, because yesterday, in the afternoon, it was 62 micrograms per metre cubed. So yeah, way worse, much worse today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Environment Canada\u2019s Air Quality Health Index is currently listed at a Level 10, or very high risk, due to wildfire smoke in northern Ontario. An orange-level air quality warning remains in effect and individuals are encouraged to limit their time outdoors if possible.<\/p>\n
According to IQAir, which tracks the most polluted cities across the globe, the air quality in Toronto is among the worst in the world for the second straight day.<\/p>\n
Kimbell said air quality conditions are expected to improve marginally this afternoon. A more substantial improvement will be seen overnight. <\/p>\n
However, he said the fresh air could be short lived as winds shift back to the southwest late Friday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe might get a return of some poor air quality tomorrow night and into Saturday morning before we get showers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShowers should improve things on Saturday, but we might have some kind of poor air quality before that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The air quality in Toronto is currently about five times worse today than it was yesterday, as wildfire…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":806050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[712,49,48,44],"class_list":["post-806128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-apple-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/806128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/806050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=806128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=806128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}