Wildfire smoke and indoor air quality: Mitigation of climate change impacts in city community centers

Impacts due to climate change are being felt now and will be felt in the future with increasing severity. For this reason, adapting to a warmer, and possibly smokier world, is a critical step to take now. Among the critical adaptations cities can, and should, take is to provide access to cool spaces and, in some regions, access to clean air. This is because the size and severity of the wildfire season appears to be increasing, in part, due to climate change. While Seattle generally has good air quality and meets all federal air quality standards, in the past few years, extreme wildfire seasons have led to numerous days with very poor air quality. For example, in 2018, Seattle had 6 days of air quality in the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups range (indicating a PM_2.5 range of 101-150 μg/m³) and 4 days in the Unhealthy for Everyone range (indicating a PM_2.5 range of 151-200 μg/m³) due to wildfire smoke, and the highest PM_2.5 value ever recorded in Seattle (186 μg/m³). In some cases, high levels of PM_2.5 were also observed in indoor air. Starting in 2019, the City of Seattle partnered with scientists at the University of Washington to evaluate a program to provide cool and cleaner air spaces in city community centers, with an initial emphasis on frontline communities—those that experience the first and worst consequences of climate change. Clean air is provided using high efficiency particle filtration for the building spaces, and this is combined with evaluation using low-cost PurpleAir particulate matter sensors both indoors and outdoors. It's important to note that, because of large variations in weather and smoke, the need for these strategies can vary from year to year. Nonetheless, it is essential to plan ahead for these adaptation measures to be effective. In this presentation we will describe the need for this effort, as well as our progress and recommendations for this type of project.