Exercise in Wildfire Smoke: Poor Decision?
The West is ablaze, and the smoke can be choking at times. For athletes, the pristine outdoors is a sanctuary, but what happens when that sanctuary is filled with toxic haze? Wildfire smoke is a silent, insidious threat to performance and health. Learn some practical health tips and how to protect yourself and keep training.
Athletes have various tolerance levels to different outdoor conditions. Wind, high temperatures, low temperatures, all present different challenges to different athletes and when to ride inside or outside. Air Quality, especially from wildfire smoke is not a condition to tolerate or push outdoor riding in.
Right now, as of early August, 2024, there are hundreds of wildfires burning across the American West. Most years there’s fires, some years those fires are closer to urban areas, or wind blows smoke into urban areas from hundreds of miles away. Training in poor air quality is detrimental to performance and can have lasting effects. Do not be ignorant to the current air quality conditions in your region. You can view fires and smoke in your region HERE.
This simple chart from the EPA defines how healthy or unhealthy the AQI (Air Quality Index) is for different groups. While I am not a doctor and cannot tell you that you’re in a sensitive group from this graph, we do know that when you’re out there exercising, you’re pulling more air into your system, and if that air is poor quality due to pollution, you’re doing more damage than being outside in a resting state. With that in mind I tend to err on the side of caution. At rest, you may not consider >100 AQI unhealthy unless you’re a sensitive group. Exercising, and pulling a ton of bad into your respiratory system puts you at a higher risk. If >100 AQI is unhealthy for sensitive groups, that’s my limit to ride outside and that's when I advise my athletes to turn on the air filter and ride inside. >150 is considered unhealthy for everyone and the outdoors should be avoided in those conditions.
The research supports the notion that exercising in polluted air has various negative effects that last for varying times and that these effects require more research. You can read some of it Here, Here, Here and Here (Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis are the best)
Air Quality is regional, and variable. The AQI might be >150 in the morning and with a wind shift, can be < 100 in the afternoon and safer to ride. The resources I use to check the air quality throughout the day are Purple Air, and AirNow.gov. Purple Air uses more sensors to get a better look at acute regional areas with poor air quality, and you can change the settings to see different types of pollution. AirNow.gov seems to have higher quality, controlled sensors but makes a more blended graph that I find isn’t as accurate in smaller areas when you’re looking at where to ride. For example, there’s a sizable fire burning just west of Loveland Colorado blowing smoke into Loveland and South Fort Collins but north of Fort Collins has more reasonable air quality. AirNow.gov blends those readings where Purple Air has more acute accuracy.
Currently, Purple Air is saying over 100 AQI pretty much everywhere between Fort Collins and Denver (below), so I’m likely going to ride inside today and recommend to my local athletes that they do the same. AirNow.gov is reading a bit lower but I believe that to be less sensors or blending sensor readings. Purple Air isn’t always fool proof, some people have indoor sensors or maybe their sensor is under a sprinkler part of the day but it’s usually easy to spot those outliers when the air quality is generally terrible.
In short, poor air quality is unhealthy, as an athlete you move more air than a sedentary person outside and the adverse health effects of consuming poor air become higher. Take your workout inside when the AQI is >100. One last tip, pick up an air filter that’s rated to pick up these types of air pollution particles, that’s the right size for your space. I have a couple of these Levoit filters so I can have one in the workout space and one in a living space or bedroom at night. Another good one is Blue Air. You can also replace your home air filter now and every quarter with a MERV 13 filter. It will catch smoke, smog and even viruses. If you use Filtrete, that's a 1900 or better. Once the filter is replaced, run the fan on your HVAC to circulate the air. The HVAC will clean the air as it pushes through the filter.
Finally, training or competing in an outdoor environment means you may be forced to choose between participating in an event despite this threat to your health or forfeit your event entry and all the funds you've committed to the travel. It's recommended that serious consideration given to the Registration Insurance (Bike Reg calls it the "Protect my Registration Fees") and travel insurance to protect your travel expenses.
Thanks for reading-