Bradley Kindall paused from his work on the top floor of the Eighth & Main building on Thursday and took his phone out to capture the thick gray smoke shrouding the other high-rises downtown.
Kindall is no stranger to the smoke — he’s lived in Idaho for some 40 years, after all — but every summer when the the it inevitability moves in, so do the scratchy throats, headaches and sore eyes. At least with the Treasure Valley’s wintertime inversions , one can head up to Bogus Basin for some respite. Not with the smoke, he said.
“It’s painful and depressing,” Kindall told the Idaho Statesman by phone. “It makes you feel claustrophobic.”
Breathing in the tiny particles in wildfire smoke is hard on the respiratory system. But it’s also hard on our brains.
Jamie Derrick, a psychology professor at the University of Idaho, says a growing body of research shows short-term and long-term health impacts on people exposed to wildfire smoke, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.