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Air pollution generates health costs of around $30 billion per year in Canada, according to Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers. PHOTO : The Canadian Press / Christinne Muschi

June 7 is Clean Air Day in Canada. Highlighting the importance of air quality to our health is all the more meaningful this year with the wildfires raging across the country. In Quebec alone, 4,000 people die prematurely each year due to poor air quality, as pointed out by Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, president of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment. “It is worrying, because here we are in an acute episode [de pollution atmosphérique] “, underlines the family doctor.

Dr. Pétrin-Desrosiers says that the more we study air pollution, the more we realize that its consequences are not limited to our lungs and heart. Poor air quality also affects our brains, the health of toddlers and the health of pregnant women. It would also be responsible for other health problems whose causal links would have been underestimated.

« This is a matter of concern. Ideally, there should be zero fine particles in the air, because there is no threshold considered safe for health at present. »

— A quote from

Dr. Claudel Pétrin-Desrosiers, President of the Quebec Association of Physicians for the Environment