Michigan Wildlife Smoked Billions of Cigarettes Worth of Pollution This Summer
Smoke inhalation hurt the animals who had to breathe in Canada's toxic smoke all day long
Big Rapids — I spent the worst of it sheltered with the windows shut and AC running, watching the Air Quality Index hover over 500 for multiple days while I was told to stay indoors.
This is how I had to spend one of the rare Michigan weekends with nice weather. Like everyone else, I was annoyed about this fact, but then another thought hit me. I was lucky to at least have been indoors, while all of our Michigan wildlife were far less lucky.
The deer, squirrels, rabbits, birds, bears, and every other wild animal in Michigan (plus all our livestock) had no choice but to breathe in the Canadian pollution all day, every day.
This made me go from annoyed to a mixture of angry and curious, so I dug into the math the way the “experts” have been doing it for us lately, comparing this smoke to smoking cigarettes.
The standard comparison used by researchers and health experts is this: Being outside all day in pollution with AQI of 100–200 is like smoking 5–10 cigarettes a day. On really bad days (AQI 400+), it jumps to a full pack or more.
On July 16, when sensors in West Michigan were showing AQI readings of a shocking 616–677, that was a day of 20 to 30+ cigarette equivalents for anything breathing outdoor air all day.
Detroit hit short-term spikes in the 650–724 range and was ranked the worst air quality on the planet. July 17 wasn’t any better. That’s multiple consecutive days at or above a full pack’s worth of fine particulate.
The days around it were also bad. Build-up on July 15 and lingering smoke from July 18 to 20 kept levels unhealthy. Even the tapering days were similar to 5 to 12 cigarettes. As anyone who was forced to work outside would tell you, it felt like chain-smoking day after day.
Previous summers brought similar multi-day or multi-week smoke bombs too, but this was the worst we’ve seen yet. Using a conservative average of 8–15 cigarette equivalents per bad day and roughly 10–15 significant bad days, here’s what I found.
Each animal in Michigan has inhaled roughly 200–400 cigarette equivalents this summer alone. With roughly 2 million white-tailed deer in the state, that’s roughly 400 million to 800 million cigarette equivalents. Add the cattle, poultry, and the rest of the wildlife, and the statewide total for animals easily pushes into the billions.
When I’m out bowhunting this October, I will be wonder if the deer I’m looking at will have any long-term lung damage from this. And will it effect the meat?
Air pollution is not harmless to animals or the meat we get from them.
Studies show particles from wildfires like this penetrate deep into lungs, causing irritation, inflammation, bronchitis-like symptoms, and fluid buildup. Livestock studies on calves exposed during wildfire seasons documented increased respiratory rate, heart rate, body temperature, inflammation markers, and metabolic shifts even after exposure.
Wildlife also suffer respiratory distress, reduced lung function, higher disease susceptibility, and sometimes death from smoke inhalation (imagine a small bird trying to fly for the past week in this).
Inflamed animals often produce lower-quality meat with tougher texture, off-flavors, or conditions linked to elevated stress hormones. That sure doesn’t sound very appetizing.
The anger over this is real and justified. This has gone on four summers in a row. Our entire state is breathing poison, and our livestock and wildlife have nowhere to hide.
That’s unacceptable.
A few things we can take away from this:
- This was entirely preventable.
- Conservation and land management is critically important.
- The danger of this pollution is real and shocking.
Canada’s land management efforts haven’t kept pace with the growing risk. They are making mistakes, and our state is paying the price.
