Millions in US Under Air Quality Alerts as Canadian Wildfire Smoke Blankets Midwestern, East Coast Skies Yet Again

Tens of millions of Americans are under air quality alerts Wednesday as a smoky haze from the ongoing Canadian wildfires envelops the skies of large portions of the Midwest and some areas of the East Coast, according to CNN.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has issued air quality alerts for all or parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky and Washington, D.C., as smoke from the ongoing Canadian wildfires hangs over large portions of the U.S. Air quality alerts issued Wednesday cover at least 80 million Americans, according to CNN.

The air quality alerts are back in effect over large swaths of the country, weeks after the NWS issued air quality alerts earlier in June which included at least 115 million people in their scope. This summer’s fires have already burned at least 19 million acres of land across Canada as of Tuesday, according to CNN.

Though the smoky haze’s density varies across these states, the NWS has said that it will linger and cause poor air quality across American skies until Thursday at the earliest, according to a tweet from the La Crosse, Wisconsin, office of the NWS.

Of the eight cities with the most polluted air in the world Wednesday afternoon, four are U.S. cities: Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit and Washington, D.C.,