Wildfire smoke
2024-08-30 wildfire smoke episode affecting Boise City, ID
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 89.5 µg/m³ near Boise City across 1 covered metro home to 845,877 people. 1 metro recorded their worst day on record.
Counting the extra PM2.5 above each metro's typical day, this event handed the average affected resident ≈ 6.7 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 5.7 million cigarettes. An awareness illustration of outdoor exposure at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette (Berkeley Earth), counting only the event's ranked days; not a medical dose.
Episode peak
-- cigarettes
The smoke map's scale, replayed over this event: the surface interpolates between covered metros' daily records, framed to the affected region. Hover for a reading, click a metro to pin it to the card. Days a monitor did not report draw nothing.
What happened, in the record
The supplied retained evidence supports wildfire smoke for this event; no supplied evidence establishes membership in a broader time-bounded episode.
Affected metros
| Metro | Peak PM2.5 | Cigarettes, whole event | Peak day | All-time standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boise City, ID | 89.5 µg/m³ | 7.4 | Aug 31, 2024 | Worst day on record |
"Cigarettes, whole event" totals a metro's ranked event days at 22 µg/m³ per cigarette: what a person outdoors there breathed across the event, as the illustration. "All-time standing" is where this episode's days sit in each metro's ranked record (worst-area measure, since 1999). Full local context is on each metro's Air Records page.
The evidence
EPA AQS monitor qualifier 4
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier RT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (RT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 1 PM2.5 sample in the candidate CBSA on 2024-08-30, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the sample. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 120 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-08-30, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier RT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted request-exclusion qualifier (RT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 2 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-08-31, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. A request-exclusion qualifier is an official submitting-agency causal claim, but this endpoint does not establish EPA concurrence.
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 120 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2024-08-31, identifying wildfire smoke as affecting the samples. An informational qualifier is an official submitting-agency flag, not a request for exclusion or an EPA-concurred determination.
NWS Air Quality Alert 1
- Archived Boise Air Quality Advisory, August 30, 2024 Idaho DEQ explicitly attributed degraded Boise-area air quality during the event to wildfire smoke. IEM is the archive, not the official system of record.
Agency and publisher pages 1
- Air Quality Advisory in Boise. Here’s how long it will last Contemporaneous reporting said the Treasure Valley advisory was issued as smoke arrived from large wildfires in the Boise National Forest.
What remains uncertain
- Agency-submitted AQS qualifiers do not establish EPA concurrence.
Status and provenance
Research preview: this record carries research-only status and its boundaries, cause, and name may change as evidence review completes. Grouping policy common_sense_root_cause_grouping.v2. The cause label reflects the assembled evidence above, not an IAQng detection formula.