Air Quality Prompts Jump in Emergency Room Visits News | August 26, 2023 | 0 | by Morgan McCarthy Smoke from the wildfires burning in Canada is blamed for a major jump in asthma-related trips to the emergency room in Wisconsin and a dozen other states. The CDC says researchers found that ER visits were 17-percent higher than usual in areas where wildfire smoke enveloped the region, triggering air quality alerts between April and August. That included Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, as well as Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia. New York and New Jersey had the highest proportion of emergency room visits.