My sister and I don't see much of each other--she lives in a western suburb of Cleveland in the summer and on the west coast of Florida in the winter--but we communicate nearly every day via text. She reported with some outrage in a recent exchange that her daily walks through her pleasant tree-shaded neighborhood had been marred by dense smoke from the Canadian wildfires. Visibility in her area was reduced to one or two miles, and the region's higher-than-normal heat and humidity added to the air-quality concerns. She said it was hard to breathe.

Along with the greater Cleveland area, cities including Toledo, Milwaukee and Detroit recently recorded Air Quality Index readings that reached or exceeded 450, well beyond the level of 300 that indicates hazardous air quality.

My sister and her husband have divided their year between Ohio and Florida for two decades because she suffers from seasonal affective disorder, a type of depression linked to........

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