Purely anecdotal here, but I swam outdoors one morning couple weeks ago when the air quality was very poor due to the wildfire smoke, and I definitely noticed an impact on my workout and afterwards.

If you have the option to swim indoors, I'd go with that.

I'm no expert, just an asthmatic with experience of living in the areas with occasional (Bay Area) or more or less constant (Sac area) crappy air quality. I follow "if AQI > 100, stay inside" rule, and that definitely includes swimming for me. I have AQI sensors inside as well. When I lived in Sac area, I had to turn on purifiers in the garage for a while before I would actually go and exercise there, because even with a newish house and having taken extra steps to insulate, pm would seep through somehow, so I had to get it down to acceptable levels before I'd start exercising.

Back in oz a few years back when the bush fires happened I was just going easy easy when swimming. The smoke even got to inside the pools at indoor pools. If you notice it probably worth just treating the swim like a walk and do some drills and snorkel work. Don’t have any science behind that but they would avoid discomfort and the mental block of breathing in smoke hard. Try to do one swim a week inside and just do a bunch of 25s with short rest to keep the hard stroke feels. Hope the fires finish up soon they are very scary

AQI was 154 where I'm at yesterday. I trained inside at home. My pool is indoor, but they generally leave an overhead bay door open and a man door, since the dehumidification system is down.

Knowing AQI wouldn't be much better today, I called to see if they could keep it closed. The manager tells me it was open all day yesterday. She said that if they closed the doors it could cause irritation from chlorine. I was beside myself. It's raining and the AQI is down to 139 at the moment, but I thankfully decided to bag the session until it's under 100. Hopefully it will be tomorrow. Otoh, I'm not pleased with the jackass pool manager. She's clueless. This smoke is unprecedented and needs to be considered when doing strenuous outdoor activities. It's not worth it.

Definitely unprecedented for me as well. This time of year its standard to check heat/humidity/dew point for outside workouts but this smoke thing is a new one.

Currently at 160 and my tempo run yesterday with heat/humidity/dew point/smoke wasn't a banner day. in retrospect maybe I should have bailed on it or shortened it.

So your all clear is 100?

I should probably go read up on the smoke level chart based on how I felt yesterday. Honestly I'd not been giving it much thought but I think I probably should.

On thread topic, I'd treat outdoor swimming just like any other outdoor activity.

Everything that works in your body people take for granted. Don't f*ck around with your lungs. You breathe in 9x as much volume on average while exercising, given you are on here you probably have significantly bigger lung capacity than that 9x times, is 15x times? 18x times? Think about how much very small (small is dangerous) particles you are breathing in that get stuck in your lungs much deeper into the lungs.

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I’ve always been wary of my indoor AQI when outside is so bad. I run an air purifier with a hepa filter most of the day, but given how bad this summer has been in Minneapolis it’d be nice to feel safe about being inside. What sensors do you use, purple air?

Great points Thomas, thank you

I have a VO2 max indoor ride scheduled

REALLY was looking forward to thrashing myself.

BUT with air quality index reading of 165. Going to wait another day

I decided to take a break yesterday and avoid the smoke. Today was better. Part of the problem I think for me is ambiguity about what's safe at different levels. Some AQI levels are clearly fine, and others are not, but there's a gray area as well. I tend to be a little conservative but maybe I should be more conservative.

I am in the twin cities and the AQI has been above 100 for some time. I was feeling terrible after running/biking outside, so I decided to move all my training indoors until the air quality improves. I did some research and found that training outside is not recommended when the AQI is above 100.

What resources did you find? I'm trying to read everything I can find. I've had trouble finding specific AQI recommendations.

Fellow Minnesotan and it has been pretty terrible here. I saw the sky this afternoon. I rowed indoors instead of running outside, it was hard only because Erging sucks, but the air quality was ok.

I lived in Yellowknife Canada in 2014 during one of the worst prolonged wildfire and smoke seasons on record. I have asthma.
Canada uses an AQHI index, but I did keep my eye on the AQI pm 2.5 numbers and they were sometimes over 700!
A lot of people carried on with their outdoor activities (it’s a very short summer in the sub-Arctic) but I found I was affected at about 100-200 pm 2.5 AQI.
A local doctor and her paediatrician husband did publish some findings on the effects of the smoke on local population.
https://cumming.ucalgary.ca/...orthwest-territories
Some people seemed very unaffected, even at very high smoke levels, but I wasn’t one of them.
I think I would probably risk an outdoor swim during an extended period of smoke, just as swimming is usually <1hr and sometimes you need to have some joy in doing something outside. It’s not like Covid where you take off your mask in public and - bam - you end up struck down. Exposures are more cumulative.

I've been told to avoid swimming in outdoor pools and lakes after wildfires because of air quality obviously but also because they affect water quality with ashes so you need to wait for the water to run through filters for a couple days.

Haha!!!!!! That's hysterical. Are you drinking the water? How could ashes possibly get into your body by swimming through it? Living where I am you'd never swim with that terrible advice.

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Face palm.
There's a reason swims get cancelled when the water quality is poor even without gulping water during your swim.
This was advice from a well educated doctor who happens to be a triathlete too. I live in Northern California where we are no strangers to wildfires/smoke so I'll take his advice over yours. Anyway, whether or not this is a valid advice, the air quality alone is enough for me to not exercise outside but that's just me. You seem smarter and stronger so go for it.

I'm interested as well.. initially I was just reading the warnings on my iPhone and they tend to be in the Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups but its almost 150? Yesterday it was 160'sh.

Personally I prefer being outside for workouts but want to be smart about it.

RE: Wildfire smoke/ash affecting pool water.

I'm not sure the chemistry or volume is there for PM2.5 to affect chlorinated pool water. Ash and other combustion products aren't very harmful to skin, especially in such low concentrations. The only thing I can see happening is the increase in carbon making the water slightly more basic, which *may* allow more bacteria to proliferate. But this should be combated by a competent pool crew, and would be apparent pretty quickly on smell alone.

I would be more concerned about open water ponds/lakes, not only because they are more delicately balanced but also because of the continued runoff concentrating contaminants into the lake. The threshold for potable drinking water is much much lower than a safe swimming water though.

I don't know about the airborne properties of chemical retardants, but if you live very close to an active wildfire that may be cause for concern.