Buying Air: The Cost of Climate Chaos

I never thought it would come to this, but I am buying air. In New York City where I live, our air has become dangerous for my health. Canadian wildfire smoke migrating down to us, our own pollution in the City, the heat, accumulating effects of climate change show up on my weather App daily now. Air quality = unhealthy. We are in global climate chaos.

Where I grew up in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains of New York, we did not think about air quality. I was outside most of the time. And summers, our windows were always open. On the rare day when we had to travel to the nearest city, Albany, for something, I would immediately have a shower and shampoo when we got back home. I remember not being able to stand the way my hair smelled after being in Albany for a few hours, because of the air pollution. Albany is a very small city, and yet, our country air was clean, fresh, delightful in contrast. 

After living in New York City for 30 years, I have grown accustomed to the smells of smoke and air pollution. I ignore it and think, I love to be outside. Every day I walk for “fresh air” and to see what types of seasonal flowers have started blooming by the buildings’ fences, and to listen for local bird songs. My apartment windows are always open. I can’t wait for chances to get to the City parks and beaches.

That has all changed this summer. My younger daughter, who had COVID 3 times, calls some days to say not to go outside and to close my windows when the air quality is listed as dangerous. Many days. My older daughter texts saying the same thing.

I scoffed, at first. I kept the windows open. I turned on the fans. I bought more indoor plants.

But I started to notice that on the days when the weather App on my phone listed air quality as “unhealthy” in my neighborhood, I was feeling terrible. I was sleepy. I was dragging my body around through the day, fatigued. I had trouble concentrating when I started to do something. My eyes burned. On the worst air quality days, I was dragging my feet on my daily walks, not taking pleasure in the usual sightings of flowers or the songs of birds. I felt better inside the grocery store or the pharmacy or the bus than I did outside.

Hazardous Weather Conditions

The weather App on my phone kept showing an indicator that the air quality is unhealthy. On my way back from a free TaiChi class outdoors in Bryant Park in Manhattan, a subway announcement from New York State advised commuters to stay inside. I couldn’t get away from the news about the bad air. Today the National Weather Service has 2 advisories for me in NYC, Hazardous Weather Conditions of “Excessive Heat Warning” and “Air Quality” as unhealthy.

Poor air quality puts sensitive people at risk, I know. Heart attack, stroke, asthma and more. It finally dawned on me that, since I had COVID twice myself, and had been at risk for heart attack for years because of very high cholesterol, “sensitive people” in the hazardous weather warnings actually meant me.

I bought an air purifier. Reluctantly. I close the windows too.

Climate chaos has come home to me in New York City. While I always had thought I would accept the future, I am trying to adjust and buy my way out of it.

The effects of human-caused global warming are happening now, are irreversible for people alive today, and will worsen as long as humans add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

— NASA, Vital Signs of the Planet

I write about the catastrophic environmental and health effects of gas drilling in my novel, Brindle 24 – the Last Day in the Life of a Town. There, I focused on air, water and soil contamination and the health effects on people, pets, and plants. But the climate chaos changes around us are less science fiction or speculative fiction than reality now.

What ways are you adjusting?