Minnesota summers are too short for bad air quality

Another air quality alert, another round of family logistics. Soccer practice: canceled. The zoo trip you promised: postponed, again. And Saturday’s family reunion — the one you’ve been planning since March — now hinges on whether you can find an indoor space by Friday. You never used to plan summer around smoke forecasts. Now, it’s just part of the checklist.

Air quality across Minnesota deteriorated to hazardous levels last week as smoke from wildfires in Canada and northern Minnesota blanket the state. According to IQ Air’s World Air Quality Ranking, as of last Thursday morning, Minneapolis ranked as the most polluted major city in the world, surpassing notoriously polluted cities such as Delhi, India, in real-time global air quality rankings.

State experts expect these alerts to become a recurring part of our summers, with repeated wildfire smoke events and ozone levels that can reach unhealthy levels even for the general population. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has forecasted up to 16 days of smoke impacts this season and as many as six days when ozone reaches levels unsafe for us all.

Related: The smoky season in Minnesota has just begun as fires spread and air quality suffers

Those alerts don’t stop at canceled plans. Wildfire smoke brings fine particle pollution into Minnesota on the wind, pulling from fires burning far beyond our borders. Ozone, by contrast, forms here on hot summer days when pollutants from vehicles, industry and other sources react with sunlight. Both can make breathing difficult, aggravate asthma and increase health risks for children, older adults, outdoor workers and people with heart or lung conditions. On the worst days, even the healthiest among us are advised to stay inside and limit outdoor activity.

Air quality is invisible until it isn’t. In Minnesota, the price is measured in summer days and the health of the people who spend them outdoors. We live for this season. We wait all year for the lakes, the ball fields, the long evenings. No one wants to spend them inside, watching the haze.

Here’s the part that should give you hope: This is a manageable problem — but only if we’re honest about where the pollution comes from.

The air on any given day is the sum of what drifts in and what we create ourselves. There are several ways we can better address the causes of wildfires while preserving our forests. But that’s not our only opportunity to act. We can also cut the pollution we generate here, as every ton we reduce makes Minnesota’s air more resilient when smoke and ozone-forming heat arrives. 

Minnesota has made real progress on the big stuff. However, most of our air pollution today comes from sources that regulation can’t easily address — and that’s exactly the gap that Clean Air Minnesota, a collaborative effort that helps cut pollution at its source, was built to fill.

Related: This herbicide is so toxic it’s been banned in over 70 countries. Plants in the South are releasing it into the air.

For 20 years, this public-private-community partnership has funded locally driven and voluntary cost-effective projects, helping fleets retire diesel equipment, small businesses cut smog-forming emissions and households swap old wood stoves for cleaner EPA-certified models.

Minnesota businesses have always been part of this story. Clean Air Minnesota’s progress didn’t happen through mandates; it happened because companies chose to act. Whether you run a fleet, operate a facility or lead a small business, there’s an opportunity to help build upon that progress as Minnesota faces more frequent air quality challenges.

When the next air quality alert appears on your phone, treat it as more than a weather forecast. Treat it as a reminder that clean air is something we build before the bad days arrive. That means continuing to invest in the partnerships, grants, and local projects that reduce pollution close to home — and recognizing that all of us, from policymakers to businesses to individual Minnesotans, have a role to play.

We cannot control the wind. We cannot control every fire. But we can control the pollution we create — and give ourselves more breathing room for the summer days we all cherish. 

Alex Keilty and Eben Kowler are senior partnership managers at Environmental Initiative, which convenes Clean Air Minnesota, a coalition of air quality leaders who are working voluntarily and proactively to reduce fine particulate matter (soot) and ground-level ozone (smog).

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