A week ago I was surrounded by a eerie orange color that made me feel as if I were in the middle of a giant jack-o-lantern. I mean, I wouldn’t have faulted you if you pulled a Chicken Little and thought the sky was falling. It was just apocalyptic. And it science shows that this can affect your mood, and also explains why you feel more drowsy on foggy days. Researchers at BYU found more mental health distress in people during seasons with less sunlight- in fact, sunlight has the most impact on our mental health than any other environmental factor. Another study also suggests that sunlight might also boost production of natural anti-depressants in your brain, which means a decreased production in absence of sunlight. I definitely felt the lowlight environment subduing my mood, and I could almost feel my academic performance taking a bit of a hit. It just feels so depressing to look out of the window and feel like you‘re entire world is burning. But even after the halloween themed light show subsided, that whole layer of smoke descended on us for a good week. I remember looking on Purple Air and seeing values in the excess of 400- something I don’t think has ever happened for such a sustained period of time and that I felt was unique enough to take screenshots of it. But this isn’t some trophy to hang on our wall; smoke has real, tangible effects on our community. Typical symptoms of this consistent low air quality are decreased lung ability, exacerbated asthma. You then start to see increased cases of bronchitis and pneumonia- and yet we still haven’t fully studied the cardiovascular outcomes, so you could actually be looking at a lot more long term effects than listed here. So from the sky looking like pumpkin all the time, we went to it looking grey all the time- and we couldn’t even go outside. Then we got a little bit of sun one day. Wow. The next day, the sky was even blue. That really almost got me to tears because of how simple it is to wish for yet how awesome it is to actually receive. For me, that blue sky gave me knowledge I could actually go outside without facing permanent consequences, and I think that we should be thankful of that blue sky for giving us that assurance- who knows if I would’ve ever gone outside to that ominous orange glow.
