When there is wildfire smoke in your area, you want to keep your home as sealed off as possible to avoid dangerous smoke seeping in.
Keep your doors and windows tightly shut, and you can put wet towels along the base of doors to insulate your home further from outdoor air, said Laura Corlin, an associate professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.
An air purifier is the best way to filter out dangerous particles from wildfire smoke. If you do not have one, the Environmental Protection Agency offers instructions for how to make a D.I.Y. air cleaner, which can help as a temporary solution.
If you want to run your air-conditioner, make sure that your unit is not pulling in polluted air from outside. If you have a central air unit that takes in outside air, close the outside air damper, or switch the system to recirculate mode.
If you have a window unit, you should also close the outside air damper; if you cannot do so, fans might be a safer option for circulating air. Keep in mind that window units do not clean indoor air, because the filters are not effective at filtering out small particles, said Dr. Alexander Rabin, a pulmonologist at Michigan Medicine.
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