Wildfire smoke
2026-01-28 wildfire smoke episode affecting Charleston-North Charleston, SC
Daily PM2.5 peaked at 110.1 µg/m³ near Charleston across 1 covered metro home to 869,940 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 ≈ 4.6 cigarettes. Across everyone living in the affected metros, that is the collective equivalent of ≈ 4.0 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charleston-North Charleston, SC | 110.1 µg/m³ | 5.0 | Jan 28, 2026 | 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 1
- AQS PM2.5 qualifier IT — Wildfire-U. S. EPA AQS carries an agency-submitted informational qualifier (IT, Wildfire-U. S.) on 24 PM2.5 samples in the candidate CBSA on 2026-01-28, 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.
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.