GoKawiilThe howling winds are like nothing I've heard as they churn the eerie, smoke-filled sky above my community. Nearby, a massive wildfire rages. Disaster is imminent.
In our second-story apartment, my partner and I pack up our most essential belongings and a few treasured possessions. We tape our window seams to prevent smoke and ash from blowing inside and keep our eyes glued to a map of the fire's spread.
The rising stress and deteriorating air quality are too much. We head 20 miles south to a hotel, where we stay until the fire is more contained. Even there, we see ash rain down from the sky.
I live in Pasadena, and my apartment was just outside the evacuation zone for the Eaton Fire, which took 19 lives and destroyed over 9,400 structures in January 2025. That month, the Eaton and Palisades fires raged simultaneously across Southern California, becoming the second- and third-most destructive wildfires in state history.
We were lucky, as the fire's spread stopped five miles from our apartment. While many lost their homes, we were able to return to ours. Still, our taped-up windows did little to keep ash and smoke from seeping through cracks and coating everything in our apartment.
With unhealthy outdoor air quality, we couldn't open windows for fresh air, so we relied on our air purifier. At the time, we had just one in our living room. We've since added another to our bedroom, along with two air quality monitors in each area.
The atmospheric dangers haven't gone away: As I write this piece, smoke from a Boyle Heights warehouse fire is blowing toward us, making it once again ill-advised to open windows.
Fires are a significant contributor to poor air quality, but they aren't the only one. Power plants burning fossil fuels spew pollutants, as does car exhaust from highways and city streets. There's a reason why our phones' weather apps report each day's air quality index, or AQI. And although overall outdoor air quality in the US has improved over the decades, it hasn't gotten better everywhere, especially in communities of color.
We face breathing dangers indoors as well, from gas-burning appliances and furnaces to myriad household chemicals and the off-gassing from furnishings and other goods. Outdoor air pollution slithers inside.
As a health and wellness writer for 12 years, I've often seen concerns about the health risks in the air we breathe 12 to 20 times per minute take a backseat to more tangible human needs, such as crystal-clear water and food free of contaminants. But there are simple steps we can take to improve the air quality in our homes.
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