Miquette Thompson’s rural home in Mendocino County, California, has been shrouded in smoke all week due to nearby Feliz and Woodside fires, which have burned over 1,000 acres. Smoke from wildfires in Oregon and Washington is also drifting into the area. Thompson described seeing a hazy sky as “not unusual” anymore. The wildfire smoke has created dangerous air quality in her under-resourced community.

A recent University of California study found that hospitalizations for asthma increase by 10% on smoke days. Thompson, who has long organized local safety efforts distributing free personal protective equipment (PPE) and Covid tests, noted that local health departments often fail to clarify which masks effectively filter smoke particles—N95 masks provide better protection than cloth or surgical masks.

Mutual aid groups like Mask Bloc Los Angeles have responded by distributing hundreds of thousands of masks during wildfire crises, such as the 300,000 masks handed out in two weeks during the January 2025 LA fires. Dupree, a lending library organizer, observed that when wildfire smoke affected Chicago’s air quality in July, their 15 air purifiers were not fully booked, which concerned her.

Dupree stated, “Covid and climate change are two major pillars of collective denial in the last decade. So though our lending library was created in response to one kind of public failure – namely a failure of public health, which is still ongoing – it can serve as a solution in response to this second failure, of governments to adequately address the growing threat of climate change, of worsening wildfires and worsening air quality.”

Shannon Durkin, a Mask Bloc Delaware organizer vulnerable due to cystic fibrosis, said she felt her life was “functionally over” when then-president Joe Biden declared the Covid emergency over in 2023.

These clean air clubs and lending libraries are increasingly vital as wildfire smoke becomes a persistent threat to public health across the United States.

Sources