Wide swaths of Canada and the North/Northeast U.S. are being swathed in wildfire smoke.
Exposure isn’t good for anyone, but it is really not good for kids with special needs. This includes the entire rainbow of special needs children, not only the kids with respiratory or cardiac conditions.
WHY?
Because smoke is an irritant that creates obvious and subtle difficulties for kids:
It is an eye and sinus irritant. Rubbing their eyes increases irritation. Drippy noses may not be a summer cold; it could be a histamine-driven response of their nasal passages to large amounts of particulate matter.
It increases respiratory and cardiac workload. This can produce fatigue or lowered alertness. Kids rarely sense an increase in their heart rate. They struggle to describe “not feeling well” even if they can communicate, because this is a relatively rare event.
who cannot fully comprehend the situation. They may not be verbal, and they may not be able or willing to accept the safety limitations that we use to keep them healthy. Some kids are highly tuned to a change in their environment. It scares them and they want us to change something (“right now”) that we have no control over.
