“I’m afraid of summer now:” Vancouver is in dire need of proper ventilation

By the end of June, more than 76,000 square kilometres of Canada had burned in wildfires—a new annual record. Smoke has blanketed Ottawa, Calgary, and New York City, and more than 100 fires blazed in BC alone. A decade ago, Vancouver summers were consistently clear and sunny—whereas now the lingering threat of wildfires looms as soon as the season starts.

While Vancouver rarely has wildfires close by, local residents deal annually with the smoke. Climate change induced wildfires are causing a health crisis of poor air quality—and its effects are most acutely felt by disabled people, people living in poverty, or other marginalized groups.

“Whenever the air quality gets worse—especially with forest fire smoke—I can’t even go outside,” Vancouver resident Patricia, who asked that her last name not be included, shared with the Straight in a phone call. “I get very lethargic, almost to the point of passing out. I have to use my inhaler way more frequently, my lymph glands swell up, my eyes burn, my throat gets sore, my sinuses [plug] up, and I get organ pain around my kidneys and liver.”

Patricia has long COVID, as well as small airways disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). During wildfire season, she isolates inside with her three air filters, monitoring the air quality index to see whether it’s safe to go down the block to the grocery store.

“It’s just terrible, within minutes of being exposed to smoke,” she said. “And when it’s lingering for weeks and weeks on end … I just have to stay home and basically live as I did during lockdown. I’m afraid of summer now, I’m afraid of the smoke.”

Patricia said her building’s HVAC system doesn’t adequately filter out smoke particles. However, she does what she can to mitigate the effects of the smoke in her apartment, keeping her windows shut and using a rubber door sweep to try and keep the smoke out.

“Most of these condo buildings are designed to take the air from outside and circulate it into the hallways of buildings,” Patricia said, clarifying that many HVAC systems have filters, but inadequate ones. “During forest fire times, the hallways still smell like smoke, because all that smoke is getting actually pulled in through the fresh air intake and then circulated through the building.”

She’s called the City and Metro Vancouver about this, as well as provincial health authorities, and found that there are indoor air quality regulations for hospitals and schools, but not apartments.

The previous City Council approved more filtered ventilation air standards starting this year, with MERV-13 filters to better protect residents from traffic and wildfire air pollution. However, this is only in new developments: there are no standards in place for existing buildings.

While the province has committed to providing air conditioners to 8,000 seniors and vulnerable people over the next three years—which critics say is both too few units, and taking too long to be installed—there is yet to be a clean air policy. The 2017 Census found 1 in 5 Canadians are disabled; a number that may have increased post-COVID due to the prevalence of long COVID and post-viral illness. Sonia Furstenau, leader of the BC Greens, urged the province to act quickly to adopt clean air standards for indoor public spaces alongside providing residential air conditioners.

Wildfire smoke is a mixture of pollutants, including PM 2.5—fine particulate matter that can easily get deep down in the lungs and into the bloodstream. This is what’s included in the air quality health index that Patricia checks to see whether it’s safe to go outside, and why proper filtration is crucial.

Dr. Emily Brigham, an airway health specialist at the University of British Columbia, said that the harmful effects of PM 2.5 are heightened for those in high-risk groups, such as those with cardiovascular or respiratory diseases.

“Patients with asthma and COPD [might] require increased levels of their normal or rescue medications, so I think it's really important to make sure to think about these groups, particularly when air quality is poor,” she said.

Vancouver resident Louise Jackson has become very sensitive to changes in air quality since developing long COVID in 2021. Even if the fire is across the city, Jackson said that she’ll feel her chest tighten as soon as the smoke changes direction and immediately need to reach for her rescue inhaler.

“A change in air quality impacts every aspect of my life,” Jackson said. Even though Vancouver is less smoky than other parts of BC, she noted that it remains a significant struggle. She said she doubles her inhaler dosage to avoid needing to go to the already overburdened hospitals during smoke season. “It makes it difficult to get up, to use the bathroom, to cook—to do anything. Air quality is a big deal, and so is heat.”

Her building doesn’t have air conditioning or proper ventilation either, so she has taken it into her own hands.

“There's the issue of cost because so many of us are battling with insurance companies and WorkSafeBC and income cuts,” Jackson said. She said she’s trying to return to work part-time but it’s been a struggle. “It's a question of justifying the extra expense for, you know, maybe one week a year. But at the same time, that one week you're not sure if you're gonna die or not, if you can't breathe.”

Jackson works with people with precarious housing in the Downtown Eastside and said the supported living buildings aren’t equipped for heat or smoke. “I think they brought the tenants in the building little tiny desk fans to help them,” she said. “A desk fan when it’s like 29 degrees just moves hot air. It helps but it’s not enough.”

Dr. Michael Schwandt, a Vancouver Coastal Health officer who specializes in environmental public health and health equity, highlighted the need for programs to support buildings and renters to create clean air spaces.

“From a purely health perspective, for fine particulate matter in wildfire smoke there’s no known lower safe amount of exposure,” Schwandt said. “We would always recommend trying to decrease the level of exposure and contaminants as much as reasonably possible.”

Schwandt recommended keeping windows closed and having portable HEPA filters, and suggested the BCCDC guide to creating a homemade filter as a more affordable alternative.

However, personal purchases are no substitute for a collective equity-based approach to clean air, he said. 

“That could include models that ensure safe housing in the first place, and looking at the very way that buildings are built so that people don't need to carry those costs personally,” Schwandt said. “People who are the least materially advantaged are often at the highest risk as well, so it's really important to understand the opportunities that we have to support people—I think that we will limit our success if we place the burden entirely on individuals.”

Patricia also wishes for a culture shift. “I have pre-existing conditions and I find that people who don’t have [them] don’t care,” she said, adding that she has seen an increase in this attitude since COVID; the idea that her health conditions make her expendable. “It affects my mental health, for sure, because it sends the message that I don’t matter as much as other people—and that’s a tough one to swallow.”

Before COVID, she was in the control group for a UBC hospital respiratory study and used to love campfires. However, now that she has small airway disease, she’s realized just how much the average Canadian doesn’t understand how dangerous it can be.

“[People] say things like ‘oh yeah, my eyes burned a little, I got a bit of a sore throat’ but I don’t think they understand exactly what PM 2.5 does to the human body,” she said. She suggested there should be more public health awareness about the dangers of smoke.

Brigham also highlighted the importance of de-politicizing the conversation around climate change to see climate health as the same level of crisis as we did COVID. 

“We need to recognize it for the emergency that it is, which is difficult when we have so many emergencies going on at once,” she acknowledged. “Climate health is human health. It is inseparable, we really have to think about it that way.”