Poor air quality caused by wildfire smoke could bring more cases of conjunctivitis and eye irritation than usual this year, experts warn.

“Now that we’re sort of deeper into summer, we’re seeing more people with just irritated eyes,” she said. “But particularly on the poor air quality days,” Mili Roy, an actively practicing ophthalmologist in Oakville, Ontario, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.

“What we are seeing is that the wildfire smoke, it creates an external irritant to the eye,” Roy said. “So that produces a form of what we call conjunctivitis due to that external irritation. And the other thing that happens with the wildfire smoke is with all the toxins that are in the air, it sort of acts as a bit of an allergen as well. So it can cause a little bit of an allergic conjunctivitis (as well).”

The wildfires have caused record-breaking levels of poor air quality over the last few weeks alone.

On June 27, Canada surpassed the known historical figure for total area burned by wildfires for a season, with several weeks of warm weather still to come.

As of July 5, some 88,000 square kilometers of forest and land had been charred, nearly 11 times the average amount burned by that date in the last 10 years.

More Canadians have been evacuated from their homes this year than in the last four decades, with over 155,000 forced to move because of wildfire and smoke.

Environment Canada issued an air quality alert for the regions bordering James Bay and Hudson Bay.

Meanwhile, the Department of Natural Resources reported that the peak wildfire season will keep its intensity in July and August.

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