TGIF! You made it through a hot, hazy, smoky week. Let's get right into it: Clean air acts: With all the wildfire smoke this week, you may have been staying indoors to avoid the crappy air quality . Well, we have bad news. Research from Worcester Polytechnic Institute shows that smoke particles can get into homes and have negative health impacts. Even worse for us here in New England, this week's air was much smokier than the conditions they tested in the lab, co-author and WPI professor Nancy Ma told WBUR's Stevee Chapman. "It's definitely beyond the threshold we monitored," she said. "It's insane. It's almost, I think, 20 times more. If we're talking about the peak time, it's almost 30 times more." - Who's most at risk? The health harms are especially severe for children. Worse air quality can lead to sleep apnea in kids. Plus, while we're asleep we don't notice the air quality. "While you're sleeping, you cannot take any actions. You will just breathe in whatever the air that you have in your bedroom," Ma said.
- What can you do about it? Ma suggests using HEPA air filters to create areas of clean air in the home. "Always close the door and let the HEPA filter run for a couple of hours or never let it stop. Do not open the window," she said. Keeping the fan mode on your HVAC system running — even when it's not heating or cooling — can also help to keep clean, filtered air circulating.
- The hazy skies also affected New England's energy grid. ISO New England said solar production plummeted, generating 40% less than what would normally be expected, WBUR's Miriam Wasser reports. (A small silver lining: the smoke tamped down temperatures, leading to less demand from air conditioning.)
- Climate change is making wildfires in Canada and the western U.S. bigger and hotter, leading to increasing spikes in air pollution here in Massachusetts. So, save these tips for the next smoky stretch.
Need tickets, need tickets: Concert and sporting event tickets bought on the secondary market could get a little cheaper under a new proposal from Gov. Maura Healey. Yesterday, she unveiled legislation that would cap ticket resale prices at 110% of face value. (So, a $100 ticket could only be resold for $110.) Companies like StubHub and SeatGeek would be limited in how much they can charge in fees, to 10% of the ticket's resale value. The legislation also bans the sale of speculative tickets — i.e. when a reseller lists tickers it doesn't actually have in hand. "Buying a ticket to a show or to a concert shouldn't feel like winning a lottery ticket," Healey said at a press conference announcing the measure yesterday. The state Legislature has to approve the bill before it can become law. - The legislation comes on the heels of four sold-out Noah Kahan shows at Fenway Park. Healey nodded to Kahan with the name of the legislation: "An Act Relative to Closing the Great Divide between Ticket Prices and Affordability, or The Great Divide Act" for short. Kahan has spoken out about predatory resellers and successfully advocated for a similar bill in his home state of Vermont. (During yesterday's press conference Kahan "called in" to throw his support behind the legislation.)
Leaving port: The sixty or so Tall Ships that called Boston home for the last week are setting sail over the next few days. But if you weren't one of the several million people who visited the big boats as part of the Sail Boston festivities, there's still a chance to check a few of them out. At least two international vessels will be nearby. Sagres, from Portugal, will go to New Bedford, to hang with the Portuguese population in that area. And the Dutch ship Oosterschelde will head just south to Quincy. - The week was so successful that plans are already underway for a future event, Sail Boston director of operations David Choate told WBUR's John Bender. One option: a festival to mark Boston's 400th anniversary in 2030.
- Visitor numbers are still being counted, Choate said. But organizers think attendance rivaled the last big boat festival Boston hosted in 2000. Back then, more than 7 million people came to see the ships over 10 days.
Construction zone: The Revere Beach International Sand Sculpting Festival kicks off today. This year's theme is "Boston Welcomes the World" — a reference to the World Cup and Tall Ships fervor that descended upon the region over the last month. Sculptors from Hawaii, Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere will compete for $28,000 in prize money. You can catch the masterpieces through Sunday. Meanwhile, check out last year's sculptures here. P.S. — What retro tactic does the Massachusetts Senate want to use to regulate young people's social media use? (My guess: making us all go back to using MySpace.) Take our Boston News Quiz and test your knowledge of this week's stories. |
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