New York Governor, Kathy Hochul, has urged residents to “stay indoors” as the air quality index had reached “dangerous” levels across some parts of the state due to the smoke from Canadian wildfires.
ABC News reported that Hochul made this announcement on Thursday while addressing a press conference, to inform and proffer solutions to the worst air quality the mega city has ever faced.
She said, “As we all know, the normal air quality index, safe, normal, is 50. Parts of our state have seen a level of over 400 in the last 24 hours and that is a dangerous situation.
“I can give you updates: we have some of the high areas: Brooklyn in the last hour was at 413. This is again, safe level is 50. This is 415.
“Health warnings for everyone, the entire population is likely to be affected, Queens, right behind Brooklyn. So we are seeing these effects. That’s 407 in the Queens area. That’s an 800% increase over what is safe and this is why we are very concerned.
“It has an immediate impact on peoples’ health, irritation to the eyes, the nose, breathing, coughing and even shortness of breathe. So our message right now is going to be reiterated multiple times because it is simply stay indoors.
“Also to protect people, we believe that the N95 mask is a important way that people can protect, stop the air particles from getting into their lungs.
“That’s why I’m announcing we are making available 1 million N95 masks to be made available at state facilities, we have over 400,000 distributed to members of the piblic at state parks, MTA stations, Javits Centre, Port Authority and Bus terminal and anywhere else people need them.”