The air won't do you good

Lenore Hittelman is in a quandary faced by many this weekend.

With the air still hazy with soot from the wildfires, do you allow your children to go play?

The choice is made that much harder for the Irvine mother because her oldest daughter's soccer team is scheduled to play a crucial match Sunday that could determine which division their squad will land in next season.

"We know the air quality is bad, but if the team needs you, what do you do?" Hittelman said as she and her children drove to Tarzana to stay with family to escape Orange County's poor air. "It's a difficult decision."

Whether the activity is youth sports, a hike, a bike ride or simply running errands, the region's air pollution is forcing people to adjust their routines -- and in many cases, stay indoors as much as possible.

Since Sunday, the air throughout nearly all of the Los Angeles Basin has had unhealthful concentrations of particulates spewed by the fires and spread by strong winds.

By today, air quality is expected to improve to moderate in L.A. County, except Santa Clarita. However, it will remain unhealthful for children and other sensitive people in much of Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. In those areas, children, the elderly and anyone with respiratory or cardiac disorders such as asthma should not exert themselves, the AQMD said. Small children are particularly vulnerable because they have narrower airways and smaller lungs, and they inhale more pollutants than adults.

"We've entered a period with the wildfires where some judgment is required," Sam Atwood, an AQMD spokesman, said Friday.

Tiny particulates, whether from wildfire smoke, diesel exhaust or some other source, are a serious health threat because they can lodge deep in lungs. When particulates reach hazardous levels, hospitalizations, even deaths, increase from asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis, heart attacks and other respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

For many people, the risk is temporary -- headaches, stuffy noses, stinging eyes, coughs and shortness of breath. But for others, it can be life-threatening.

Studies show that in the days after wildfires, hospitalizations from asthma, pneumonia, bronchitis and heart attacks rise. Even healthy people often cough and experience headaches, stinging eyes, stuffy noses and flu-like symptoms.