The Air quality top air pollution standard is 300 but New York City is off the charts now at 400 and not healthy for anyone to go outside

 Even with a mask it is debatable whether people should be outside on much of the east coast today.

When I was young and the air would burn your lungs because of so much smoke we usually closed all the windows on our house and stayed inside as much as possible until the air started to clear and only went outside when we could breathe again without our lungs burning from the smoke.

However, sometimes this was really awful if the temperatures already were 100 degrees or more outside and if we didn't have air conditioning to begin with. And even then most air conditioners only worked if you were channeling outside air into the house so all this became often "Counterproductive" on many different levels.

One solution then was to turn off the air conditioners and get a bowl of ice and a fan and blow the fan over the ice onto your face. This was the original "Air Conditioning" earlier in the 20th century and it was a standby along with opening the freezer compartment and basically standing inside it as much as one could until they cooled down some. Also, you can take an ice cube and put it on your inside wrist or the back of your neck too to cool down without ruining the air in your home with smoke.

Any way you look at it times with this much smoke are hazardous to everyone.