For decades, Los Angeles has topped the list as the smoggiest city in the U.S., but now, climate change is fueling a new kind of pollution from toxic urban wildfires to heat-driven ozone and smoke that can travel thousands of miles.
"We're seeing that air quality is highly affected by climate change and more specifically by wildfires, which are in urban areas, which involve a whole lot more toxicants than your forest fires that we normally experience," said Glory Dolphin-Hammes, CEO of IQAir.
When homes and businesses burn, they release carcinogens far more dangerous than forest smoke.
"When we look at urban wildfires, we're looking at homes, we're looking at building materials, we're looking at e-waste as well, electronic materials being burned, plastic being burned, Formaldehyde-based