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Concerns about sending kids back to school have revolved around the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But as the wildfire season has become longer, smoke finding its way into the classroom is also a problem. The Mountain West News Bureau's Maggie Mullen reports on the battle to keep children safe.

Massive wildfires across the West have worsened the air in Colorado, contributing to roughly double the number of days residents are exposed to dangerous fine particulate matter known as PM 2.5 versus a decade ago. Researchers say the air can be hazardous even if you don't see or smell smoke.

Western wildfires pose a much broader threat to human health than to just those forced to evacuate the path of the blazes. Smoke from these fires, which have burned millions of acres in California alone, is choking vast swaths of the country, an analysis of federal satellite imagery by NPR’s California Newsroom and Stanford University’s Environmental Change and Human Outcomes Lab found.

New research indicates newer homes and those constructed with central air conditioning may be better at keeping wildfire smoke out.

It found that average occupancy rates at campgrounds in the West dropped by 1.3 percentage points when smoke was bad — driving concerns about public health.

In recent weeks, Colorado’s air quality has rapidly deteriorated. Smog, a portion of which is composed of smoke from wildfires within and outside the state, has obscured our view of the mountains from the Front Range. And this week the state failed to meet an Environmental Protection Agency deadline for reducing ozone pollution.

Air quality specialists say the smoky conditions that showed up earlier than usual this year, could stick around until October for some parts of the region.

This week has brought hazy skies and air quality alerts to the Front Range and Mountain communities. Some of the pollution is coming from wildfires outside and within Colorado.

At the Early Care and Education Center at the University of Wyoming, there's a lot of what one would expect to see at a daycare - toys, books, and...

Gains in air quality had been hailed as a silver lining amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But according to new data out this week, those improvements in the U...