AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
It's been a brutal summer for wildfires so far, and the smoke is polluting people's lungs far from where wildfires burn. Scientists can't perfectly predict where the smoke will show up and therefore don't give us much advanced notice to prepare for unhealthy air. IQAir is among the apps that monitor air quality and try to predict where pollution is headed. The North America CEO, Glory Dolphin Hammes joins us now.
Welcome, Glory.
GLORY DOLPHIN HAMMES: Thanks, Ayesha.
RASCOE: IQAir is a major source for air quality information, but predicting where wildfire smoke will travel, that's actually pretty complicated, right?
HAMMES: Yes, it's quite complicated because there's just a - mixed data layers that we have to work with. And so one data layer, of course, is the intensity and height of the plume. Another is weather-oriented data layer, and then we have the geographical and topography data layer that we combine, and this allows us to see where the air might particularly stagnate. This has to do with mountain ranges. It has to do with air not being able to be dispersed because there is a mountain layer that's too high for that air to actually travel and deconcentrate over time.
RASCOE: It seems like bad air surprises us every time. Like, you know, you wake up and it's like, oh, we can't go outside today. We got to move events to the inside. We have to buy air filters and purifiers or wear a mask. Is the technology for predicting this getting better?
HAMMES: Yes. And it occurs like that probably for the general public. But those of us that work within air quality, this is actually not a surprise. We provide a forecast up to seven days. So we, within the air quality community, kind of live and breathe this and don't have the surprises that the general public have because we have these predictive models. We can see this coming.
RASCOE: Do you think then it's a matter of getting the general public to pay more attention?
HAMMES: Well, it's more of a paradigm shift. As we are watching the weather and we're all so interested and involved in the weather, at the same time, we should be also watching our air quality. And we should do this just in general to reduce the amount of pollution that we're breathing on a daily basis. So if we can do this, we can overall impact our health in a really major way.
RASCOE: When wildfire smoke is blowing in, how should we prepare?
HAMMES: Sure. So at home, you should have an air purifier. So we're hearing about air purifiers more and more, especially during the pandemic. But these particular tools will help us to breathe cleaner air indoors. Also a mask, as well. Masking up is not just for hygiene or virus purposes. It's really for pollution in general. So we're gaining more and more knowledge about air quality and also gaining better tools as well to help us.
RASCOE: That's Glory Dolphin Hammes, CEO of IQAir North America. Thank you so much for being with us.
HAMMES: Thank you so much, Ayesha.
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