{"id":51926,"date":"2020-08-26T19:08:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T01:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-your-throat-scratchy-from-smoke-or-coronavirus-heres-how-to-tell\/"},"modified":"2020-08-27T01:08:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T01:08:00","slug":"is-your-throat-scratchy-from-smoke-or-coronavirus-heres-how-to-tell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/is-your-throat-scratchy-from-smoke-or-coronavirus-heres-how-to-tell\/","title":{"rendered":"Is your throat scratchy from smoke or coronavirus? Here\u2019s how to tell."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The sun sets over a hazy downtown Denver.<\/span>Taylor Van Berkel\/ Special to The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The haze that\u2019s blocking out the mountains, blue sky and even the sun across much of Colorado is full of tiny particles that are about 1\/30th the width of a human hair.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re coming from the \u201cbiomass combustion\u201d of wildfires<\/a> in Colorado and California, and they\u2019re so small that a mask will not stop them from going down our throats and deep into our lungs. Once there, they settle into the air sacs that get oxygen to the bloodstream.<\/p>\n

The fine particulate matter is the reason the air quality in Denver has been worse even than Los Angeles and New York, Beijing and Kolkata, India. Every day for going on two weeks, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has placed the Front Range on an \u201caction day alert,\u201d meaning the particulate matter and ozone in the air is unhealthy to breathe. The worst of the air stretches from Douglas County on the south end to Larimer County up north.<\/p>\n

It means even healthy people should limit their time outside. And people with asthma, other respiratory diseases or cardiovascular issues should pretty much stay inside with the windows shut and the air conditioning turned on, health officials said Monday.<\/p>\n

Denver and surrounding towns spent the weekend choked by wildfire pollution, climbing into the red zone of the Air Quality Index, a measurement created by the Environmental Protection Agency. The scale goes from a healthy green all the way to a dangerous maroon. Red is considered unsafe even for healthy people.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s poor air quality feels like one more blow after a long five months of quarantine and social distancing \u2014 one that is causing some people added anxiety.<\/p>\n

The symptoms of inhaling too much wildfire smoke \u2014 headache, cough and a throat that feels like you smoked cigarettes \u2014 are somewhat similar to symptoms of COVID-19. The virus affects people differently, but the telltale signs a person should get a coronavirus test are typically fever, and, oftentimes, gastrointestinal symptoms.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is some overlap,\u201d said John Putman, who is director of environmental programs at the state health department. \u201cYou can have a scratchy throat both for the smoke and for COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The
The Pine Gulch Fire near Grand Junction is burning on more than 134,000 acres.<\/span>Courtesy photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Staff writer Jesse Paul contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

quality in Denver worse than in Beijing and Kolkata<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,28,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51926"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}