Toronto had the worst air quality of any major city in the world on Wednesday, Swiss firm IQAir said, as Canadian authorities urged people to stay indoors.
Toronto swept past New Delhi and the Democratic Republic of Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, as smoke from the fire turned the sky a hazy yellow-gray in Canada’s largest city.
“The biggest contributor to the increase in air pollution in Toronto right now is wildfires, although higher-than-average temperatures are also playing a role,” IQAir’s Armen Araradian told AFP.
While this year’s wildfire season has been relatively quiet compared to the devastation caused in recent years, there are more than 800 active fires nationwide.
Smoke from the blaze in northwestern Ontario has filtered into Toronto, the provincial capital.
City officials have closed swimming pools, canceled summer camp programs and shut down the official FIFA Fan Festival ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final between England and Argentina.
Montreal saw a similar but less severe impact from the fires on Tuesday.
Smoke from the fires also worsened air quality across the border in the United States, with Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire particularly affected.
New Yorkers were warned by state authorities that they “may see visible smoke and hazy skies across the state and plumes of smoke-related pollution.”
Canadians are enduring potentially dangerous air as a record heat wave continues across North America.
Extreme heat and humidity in the Mountain West spread to the densely populated East Coast of the United States and Ontario.
The heat in Ontario is expected to ease by the weekend, but officials have warned of continued wildfire danger through the remaining summer months.
Canadian fires have burned 1.9 million hectares so far this year, an area nearly the size of Slovenia.
That damage remains far off the pace of 2023, Canada’s worst fire season on record, when about 18 million hectares burned across the country.
