New York Toxic Air Hits City Stores, Spurs Mask And Filter Sales

It’s an ill wind as they say and as New York continues to be choked by some of the most toxic air pollution in the world, the city’s residents are doing their best to protect themselves.

Amazon’s
AMZN
Movers & Shakers – reflecting its 50 biggest gainers in sales over the last 24 hours – currently includes no less than 38 different types of masks, with searches for air and water filters on top of that.

Indeed, in a week that has seen some of the worst air quality levels on record on the East Coast and moved New York above Delhi for pollution levels, unsurprisingly many people are rushing to buy air filters, humidifiers and high-quality masks.

And they are also staying away from the city’s stores, with footfall slashed by stay-at-home advisories in New York and across the East Coast and Canada.

Wildfires have smothered large swathes of the U.S. in a thick plume of toxic smoke and left New York with orange skies and a burnt taste in the air, giving the Big Apple an apocalyptic backdrop more akin to The Last Of Us than the balmy start to the city’s summer season.

While residents are being urged by city authorities to stay inside, fine smoke particles can make their way indoors and air purifiers can be helpful with filtering out the pollution, hence the explosion in sales.

New York City health officials have rolled out a list of safety measures and in addition to urging residents to don high-quality masks (such as N95s or KN95s), health officials have been calling on residents to keep their windows closed, use air purifiers, and close the fresh-air intakes on air conditioners.

New York Footfall Hit

Terrible air quality is bad news for the city’s retailers, with an increasing roster of incoming flights delayed or canceled because of reduced visibility and both residents and tourists staying away from the city center.

Major League Baseball’s Yankees and Phillies had their games postponed this week, while on Broadway Hamilton and Camelot canceled performances Wednesday and Prima Facie star Jodie Comer left a matinee after just 10 minutes because of difficulty breathing.

The city shutdown comes at a time when the retail industry in New York has shed thousands of jobs since the pandemic, even though the rest of the job market has almost fully recovered, according to a report from the Center for an Urban Future.

Its study found that in the three years since February 2020, New York City lost 37,800 retail jobs, an 11.1% decline, compared with the overall private employment sector which regained all but 0.8% of jobs.

The city’s retail job losses were also far worse than in the rest of the country. Nationally, retail jobs were actually up an average 0.7%.

The impact of climate change and forest fires has become a summer hazard for California’s San Francisco and Los Angeles. Historic and increasingly vociferous wildfires have blanketed swathes of Northern California in smoke over recent years and turned the skies orange in San Francisco in 2020.

With the conditions unlikely to change until after the weekend, New York’s stores, restaurants and theatres are braced for a tough week – and the summer has only just started.