Itchy eyes, scratchy throat? Blame the air

The gray air that is hanging over the central San Joaquin Valley is unfit to breathe.

Air pollution on Wednesday reached levels high enough to cause a ban on wood burning for the day and evening from Fresno south to Bakersfield.

Air quality on Thursday is expected to be unhealthy for everyone in Kings County, where burning will be banned again. In Madera, Fresno, Tulare and Kern counties wood burning will be allowed Thursday, but only with the use of clean-burning devices that are registered with the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District.

“This is definitely the first day in wood-burning season that we’ve had no wood burning in all of the Valley from Fresno south to Kern County,” Heather Heinks, a spokeswoman at the air district, said Wednesday.

The daylong burning ban applies to burning wood and pellets in unregistered and registered residential stoves and inserts, as well as burning wood, pellets, manufactured logs in fireplaces or outdoor fire pits and chimneys.

Staying indoors and curtailing outdoor activities is also recommended, Heinks said. “On a day like today, when it linger in the unhealthy category, generally across the board the public needs to keep an eye on how much they exert themselves.”

Particles that are too tiny to be seen by the naked eye can irritate lungs, especially in people who have asthma and other respiratory conditions. Over time, exposure to particulate pollution can cause serious health problems. And in the short-term, breathing nasty air can trigger asthma attacks and increase the risk for respiratory infections.

At Sky Park Pediatrics in Fresno, Dr. Mary Howard said she had four or five appointments in the afternoon with patients who had coughs. “It’s challenging, because we want children to be active and play,” she said. “But they can’t because their asthma reacts so quickly” to air pollution, she said.

Tabitha Johnston’s youngest son was one of the coughing kids at the pediatric clinic on Wednesday afternoon. Johnston of Clovis said her son had never had a breathing problem until Christmas. She sent the 5-year-old outside to play, and “he’d come in just hacking up a lung,” she said. “Now we have a complete airway restriction that we have to use an inhaler because of this air quality issue.”

Johnston and an older son have asthma and they control it with medication. Johnston also monitors the air quality through an app on her cellphone that notifies her when the quality is poor, but her youngest son had never had a problem until this week.

The air control district provides the RAAN alert so people can see when the air is conducive for outdoor activity. Heinks said people are encouraged to keep an eye on the air quality so they can adjust their level of outdoor activity.

With the forecast for poor air quality the remainder of this week, Heinks said people can help by idling cars less and by heeding the wood-burning restriction.

This story was originally published December 27, 2017 at 11:45 AM with the headline " Itchy eyes, scratchy throat? Blame the air."