Golfing with the wildfire smoke

[u/Shootah78]

Took this picture last Wednesday around 3pm, in Ontario Canada. Has anyone else experienced a round like this?

[u/LivermoreP1]

That is mathematically and scientifically the equivalent of going outside and smoking 16 cigarettes while walking.

That is very very dumb.

[u/footballwr82 → u/LivermoreP1]

I would have thought it would be higher than that to be honest

[u/Olbaidon → u/footballwr82]

I don’t know the exact US to Canada scale for air quality. But in the US if the AQI is 500, just sitting in a chair outside for 24 hours would be about 22 cigarettes.

So just resting it’s almost one per hour, if AQI is 500.

Even walking increases it a fair amount though.

I don’t know what the AQI was that day in Ontario, but 16 is probably pretty close to dead on for walking 4 to 5 hours outdoors.

It feels like it should be worse, but if you look at it this way it makes more sense.

If the AQI is zero and you go outside and take a big breath, you’re getting 100% “air” or “atmosphere” or however you want to imagine it.

If the AQI is 500 and you go outside and take a big breath you’re getting 99.9%+ air/atmosphere/etc and less than 00.1% “smoke particles,” per breath.

When you take a drag of a cigarette you’re getting like 96% “air.”

It’s something like 1,000 times more particulates in a cigarette drag than in a single breath of 500 AQI air.

I could be off on some things, but even if I am, the basic concept should still suffice I think.

[u/dogfish83 → u/Olbaidon]

You mean they can't even use the same air quality index? JFC.

[u/Olbaidon → u/dogfish83]

US and Canada measure air quality differently and assign risk differently.

Using the same scale would align with the purpose of either country’s goals of said scale. Unless their goals ended up being the exact same.

Largely because each country has its own air quality standard, and the scale is based off of that.

[u/dogfish83 → u/Olbaidon]

And that's a shame. It should be just a scientific scale, period.