Yikes.
It definitely not as polite a way to inform the public about the air quality as Environment Canada employs, but it packs a pretty powerful punch.
A new app, "Sh**t I Smoke!," created by Brazilian designer Marcelo Coelho and French app developer Amaury Martin, converts the air quality to the equivalent number of cigarettes that would be smoked to get the same result in human lungs.
It is a stark contrast these days as wildfire smoke blankets most of B.C. in a thick haze.
Thursday morning, when the Environment Canada Air Quality Health Index was at 10-plus in Squamish, the app said that was equivalent to smoking 8.7 cigarettes over the course of the day.
To come to this conclusion, the app takes a reading from the closest Air Quality Station, in Sqaumish's case, it used the one located at Squamish Elementary School.
"The rule of thumb is simple: one cigarette per day is the rough equivalent of a PM2.5 level of 22 ug/ma," reads the explainer on the app's webpage.
While that is gobbledygook to the average person, it basically means that the app converts cigarette smoke inhaled to particulate matter (PM) in wildfire smoke that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers, which has an increased chance of being breathed into human lungs.
To up the impact, it shows a picture of the cigarettes that the wildfire smoke or pollution equates to.
It may not be the best app to download onto your child's phone, not only because of its rather frightening information, but it also uses adult language to convey its message.
"F*ck! You'll smoke..." is the way it introduces the number of cigs the pollution equates to.
To find out more, if you dare, go to shootismoke.github.io.
