NEW YORK, June 8 (Xinhua) -- The number of people across the United States exposed to extreme smoke days has grown 27 times in the past decade, as exposure to even-more-extreme smoke events has risen 11,000 fold, said an opinion piece published by The New York Times on Wednesday.
Smoke from raging wildfires in Canada has triggered air quality alerts in a number of U.S. states, with the sky over New York City rapidly darkening Wednesday afternoon and New York State Governor Kathy Hochul calling the worsening air quality "an emergency crisis."
Central and eastern areas of New York state will come under an air quality health advisory on Wednesday as air quality worsens amid wildfires in Canada, according to the New York state government.
"Even before this Tuesday's surge of smoke, Jeva Lange at Heatmap had calculated that East Coasters had inhaled more wildfire pollution so far this year than most of their counterparts on the West Coast," the report said.
