A woman jogs as wildfire smoke from Canada causes hazy conditions in New York on Thursday. — AFP NEW YORK, July 17 (AFP): The Manhattan skyline was obscured by thick haze and Chicago closed its beaches Thursday as out-of-control Canadian wildfires raged, sending smoke spewing into the United States and exposing millions of people to dangerously unhealthy air.
US states near the Canadian border including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois were particularly choked, while the Northeast including New York was also experiencing deteriorating air quality.
On Thursday evening, tracker IQAir said Chicago and Detroit were the top polluted cities in the world, with New York not far behind.
The most populous US city was shrouded by the smoke that state authorities warned contained fine particulate matter deemed unhealthy for everyone across the New York metro area and Long Island. Even worse air enveloped the central and western regions of the state.
Authorities encouraged New Yorkers to spend as little time outside as possible, with Mayor Zohran Mamdani warning of the "serious threat" of heavy heat and unsafe air.
Libraries and train stations were offering free masks, while hundreds of cooling centres were open across the city for those without access to air conditioning.
"This could become the most significant smoke event in New York City since 2023, and conditions will be closely monitored for any deterioration," the city's Department of Emergency Management said.
That year, the city's skies turned an eerie orange, with the air quality index reaching a dangerous 465.
'Our chests feel tight' -
In the Midwest, current index levels on Thursday had soared beyond that figure, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency tracker.
Chicago along with Toledo, Ohio, and areas in Minnesota relatively close to the fires were well into the 700s on the air quality index during the afternoon, with much of the rest of the upper Midwest also experiencing AQI levels in the worst category of "hazardous."
Meanwhile, an unusually intense and early summer heat wave across Europe is believed to have caused more than 10,000 excess deaths, with health experts warning that the true toll may be even higher as heat-related fatalities are often not officially recorded.
Preliminary figures from mortality monitoring agencies across Europe show a sharp rise in excess mortality - the number of deaths above what would normally be expected - during the final week of June, when record-breaking temperatures swept across much of the continent.
Researchers say many heat-related deaths are never directly attributed to extreme temperatures because victims often die from conditions such as heart attacks or respiratory illnesses that are worsened by prolonged heat exposure.
The findings point to one of Europe's deadliest early-summer heat events in recent years, although the devastating 2003 heat wave, which claimed an estimated 70,000 lives, remains the continent's worst on record.
According to EuroMOMO, a European mortality monitoring network covering two dozen countries, an estimated 14,260 excess deaths were recorded during the week ending June 28. More than 12,000 of those deaths involved people aged 65 or older. The network reported that France, Belgium and Germany experienced the highest levels of excess mortality during the period.
Lasse Vestergaard of Denmark's Statens Serum Institut, which coordinates EuroMOMO, said the heat wave was the most likely explanation for the unusually high number of deaths, noting there was no other significant event that could account for the spike. Several countries have also released their own estimates of heat-related deaths.
Germany recorded the highest national toll, with the Robert Koch Institute attributing 6,830 deaths to extreme heat through early July.
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