Growing wildfire seasons have turned smoke into a dreaded staple of Northwest summers, and recent studies argue the increase has been significant enough to erase years' worth of air quality progress in the region.
Air quality experts say there are a number of contributors to increasing wildfires and, consequently, more smoke.
"Smoke is clearly getting worse across the western U.S., well really all of North America," said University of Washington-Bothell Professor of Environmental Chemistry Dan Jaffe. "About every other year, we are having these major wildfire seasons, there's fuel buildup, climate change which dries out the fuels, and people being in the forest."
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