Should I Be Biking in This Weather?
Since the Eaton and Palisades fires started Jan. 7, I, like many Angelenos, have become vigilant about checking the air quality. The morning after the fire, I took a screenshot of the air quality in Jefferson Park, where I live, that I’ve revisited a few times since.
The sentence “Air Quality Index is 415, which is worse than yesterday at about this time” never fails to elicit a rueful chuckle. The worst Air Quality Index (AQI) classification is 300+ for “Hazardous,” which indicates emergency conditions in which the “general public is at high risk of experiencing strong irritations and adverse health effects,” according to AirNow.
To see a reading of 415 at least 15 miles from the nearest fire shook me. I’m a full-time bike commuter, and all of a sudden biking seemed like the unhealthiest possible mode of transportation.
As ash accumulated on my garbage cans, plants and every other available service outside my place, I decided that my bike and I were going to stay inside until the air felt safer. I started reading as much as I could on it and decided to join the Coalition for Clean Air’s Jan. 15 webinar “The Fires: Air Quality, Public Health and What to Do Next.”
Approximately 8,000 others joined me on the call, and many of us wanted hard-and-fast rules with clear instructions — “if you are X miles from a fire, do not go outside” or “if you see an AQI reading of Y stay indoors,” say.
After 75 minutes of presentations from the panel of assembled scientists, professors and air-quality experts, Dr. Ed Avol, professor emeritus at the USC School of Medicine, addressed the desire for straight answers next to a slide that read “Making Tough Choices.”
“It’s hard to give absolutes here,” Dr. Avol said. “‘Safe’ is in the eye of the beholder because there’s no such thing as zero risk.”
So how do we mitigate risk when deciding whether it’s safe to take the bicycle out for a spin?
Though it doesn’t account for any of the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) and other chemicals released when homes are burned, AQI is a great place to start, as UCLA’s Dr. Suzanne Paulson, an urban environment wildfire specialist, explained in a different wildfire roundtable I read through. (Like I said: I have become vigilant.)
“The AQI is the best thing that we should be following,” Paulson said. “There are thousands of compounds in the air at very, very low concentrations. Decades of science have focused on a handful of indicator species because if those things are elevated, lots of other things are elevated with them. And if they're low, then lots of other things are also low together with them.”
So though AQI doesn’t measure for the types of toxins in ash and wildfire smoke specifically, if the AQI is low and air quality is good, that indicates levels of those toxic chemicals are also low — and vice versa.
Don’t rely on the AQI reading on your phone’s weather app; use AirNow (also an app) or the AQI readings on apps like Watch Duty.
Dr. Avol also starts his check of air quality with AQI before using Watch Duty to track the wind direction (Watch Duty allows you to overlay more localized AQI readings and wind patterns under “Layers,” and I’ve found it useful and intuitive). The final check is to trust your senses: if you see ash or smoke, smell smoke and/or have irritated eyes or headaches, then you know the air is unhealthy.
When the air is unhealthy, outdoor activity (especially more aerobic activities like running and biking) should be eschewed for indoor time, Dr. Avol said. If you must be outside and the air quality is poor, you should wear an N95 mask.
For me, that’s meant about eight total miles of (masked) biking for necessary errands and appointments the past 16 days.
I’ve been inside a lot, refreshing for updates on Watch Duty, checking the evening news for footage of water drops and doing a lot of reading on the fallout and the dangers, like so many others.
Every moment I’m inside is a reminder that, this time, I am one of the lucky ones who has an “inside” in which to stay, safe from the smoke and the fire, able to decide whether I feel comfortable exposing my lungs to the air that day.
In learning more about air quality, I’ve also learned just how terrible the air quality was before the wildfires — air I was sucking down by the mile-ful on my bicycle, blissfully unaware. Of course I knew LA’s air wasn’t exactly clean, but I didn’t think about it.
Now I’m thinking about it, and that allows me to decide the levels of exposure and risk with which I’m comfortable.
In the days since the webinar, I’ve returned a few times to something Joe Lyou, president and CEO of Coalition for Clean Air, said.
“You don’t have to go very far in any direction to find a very toxic environmental challenge in your neighborhood, and sometimes you don’t have to leave your house to encounter those,” he said. “The conclusion I reached long ago is you can’t live a life of zero risk — it’s having to make some informed decisions about what you’re comfortable with.”
For now, I’m more comfortable biking with an N95. But that’s just me.