Canada’s record-breaking 2023 wildfire season led to a spike in air pollution in the country and in the US, erasing recent progress in cleaning up the air, according to new analysis.
The wildfires, which burned 42 million acres of Canadian forest, contributed to air-pollution levels not seen since 1998 in Canada and not seen since 2011 in the US, said researchers at the University of Chicago, which carried out the analysis for its Air Quality Life Index, a measure of how air pollution affects life expectancy.
More than half of Canadians breathed air that exceeded the country’s national clean ...