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With the sun obscured by haze, Spain’s players trained ahead of the World Cup final in northern New Jersey on Thursday, amid dangerous weather conditions due to smoke from wildfires in Canada.
It was unclear how quickly Spain was training. Members of the media can only observe the first 15 minutes of what was supposed to be an hour-long session in East Hanover starting at 11 a.m. EDT.
Argentina remained in the Atlanta area for training less than 24 hours after rallying to beat England and reaching the final for a second straight tournament. Marietta, Georgia, is far enough south to avoid the effects of the fire, which is being blown southeast from northern Ontario, triggering warnings from the U.S. Midwest to the Northeast.
Authorities have urged people to stay indoors or wear masks outdoors as air quality has reached unhealthy to hazardous levels, meaning it is unhealthy for anyone, regardless of their health. Experts have expressed concern about outdoor practice.
“These are high-performance athletes who move a lot of air through their lungs every practice of every game, and they really shouldn’t be training outside if air quality levels reach dangerous levels for wildfire-related air pollution,” said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency physician and head of the Global Climate and Health Alliance. “Now is the time to schedule an indoor practice. You can put an N95 mask on them, but trying to make sure everyone’s mask fits properly, I suspect that’s not the best choice. I would go find an indoor climate-controlled facility that is a shelter from clean air.”
Messages sent to FIFA and the Spanish Football Federation asking whether this was being considered or possible were not immediately returned. Smoke is expected to clear the area well before Sunday’s championship game in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which is scheduled to kick off at 3 p.m.
Air quality in East Hanover on Thursday started early in the morning as “unhealthy” but became cleaner so that by mid-afternoon it was simply “unhealthy for sensitive groups,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Now monitoring system. Particle pollution in New Jersey was more than seven times the World Health Organization standard on Thursday. The forecast is for an improvement to “moderate” for Sunday.
Smoke from wildfires — which are burning more of North America as the Earth warms — attacks nearly every system in the body, killing tens of thousands of people a year, according to numerous medical studies.
It attacks the body immediately, increasing cases of asthma with increased ambulance trips within hours. Smoke can trigger inflammation in different parts of the body, often attacking a person’s weakest spots, which can then translate into different effects of an immune system trying to fight off a nasty irritant, doctors and scientists said.
“It’s not healthy for anyone to be in smoke, especially if you exercise,” said Mary Johnson, an environmental health researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health. “You’re exchanging more air, so you’re exposed to even more pollutants, and even healthy individuals, at some point, will experience some type of health effect from their exposure to smoke. So even if they’re young, healthy individuals, it’s not a good idea to exercise in that type of environment.”
Scientists have counted at least 1,000 toxins in wildfire smoke, according to Luke Montrose, an environmental toxicologist at Colorado State University.
“If I gave you a list, you would recognize that some of them are very harmful, often associated with burning diesel fuel or cigarette smoke, such as formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds,” Montrose said. “The smoke itself can be bad.”
Associated Press reporting.
