What efforts are being made to monitor the extent of smoke events and health impacts?
It is very difficult to estimate the extent of crop residue burning across the province. The actual amount varies dramatically from year to year, depending upon amounts of rainfall, cropping patterns and weather conditions during and after the harvest season. Some years, burning may take place over quite a long fall season, or even be delayed to the following spring. As such, it would be difficult to estimate the extent of burning in a given year, or to analyze trends. Attempting to quantify smoke impacts is also very complex since a smoke event may have significant impacts, or may go almost unnoticed, depending upon location and climatic conditions. Burning the crop residue from one field, in a sensitive location and under poor weather conditions could directly impact hundreds of people. It is also difficult to correlate hospital emergency room visits with smoke events due to dispersed populations and hospital records that do not necessarily specify the cause of respiratory problems.
