Smoke From Forest Fires Temporarily Broke Washington State's Air Quality Monitoring System

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Severe air pollution that has left people across the West Coast with sore throats and stinging eyes also temporarily broke the data systems that monitor air quality in Washington State.

Andy Wineke, a spokesman for the Washington Department of Ecology, said on Sunday that seven or eight monitoring points stopped producing data in recent days because automated quality-control systems rejected the high readings as unreliable.

“There’s some trigger in the quality-control check that said the sustained readings were high,” Mr. Wineke said. Officials were working to update the system to accept the data, so it could be published on the state’s air-monitoring maps.

The thick smoke has at times given cities an apocalyptic feel up and down the West Coast, blotting out the sun in some areas and raining ash in others. Cities from San Francisco to Seattle have recorded some of the highest air pollution readings on the planet over the last week. Portland, Ore., Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles dominated the top 10 spots in a list of global cities with harmful air quality and pollution, according to IQAir, an air quality technology company based in Switzerland.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/us/oregon-wildfires-california-washington-map.html?name=styln-california-wildfires®ion=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&impression_id=10016190-f61a-11ea-aeba-d53c6c4c224c&variant=1_Show