If you’ve been feeling a burning in your eyes after spending time outside sometime in the last few months, it might be more common than you think — according to some experts, the poor air quality caused by raging wildfires across Canada is affecting more than just our lungs. Poor air quality caused by wildfire smoke could bring more cases of conjunctivitis and eye irritation than usual this year, experts warn. “I’ve had a lot of patients who are just complaining of eye irritation, or those who already have dry eye, that are really finding that their symptoms are sort of acting up,” Mili Roy, an actively practicing ophthalmologist in Oakville, Ontario, told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
Roy, who is also an assistant professor in the department of ophthalmology at the University of Toronto, said that earlier in the spring, there were more patients coming in with their seasonal allergies “being much worse because of climate change.
“Now that we’re sort of deeper into summer, we’re seeing more people with just irritated eyes,” she said. “But particularly on the poor air quality days.” The conjunctiva is a layer of tissue covering the front of the eyeball, and inflammation of that layer is called conjunctivitis. When conjunctivitis is caused by a viral infection, it’s more commonly referred to as ‘pink eye’, but conjunctivitis can also be caused by chemicals, allergens or other irritants in the air.
“What we are seeing is that the wildfire smoke, it creates an external irritant to the eye,” Roy said. “So that produces a form of what we call conjunctivitis due to that external irritation. And the other thing that happens with the wildfire smoke is with all the toxins that are in the air, it sort of acts as a bit of an allergen as well. So it can cause a little bit of an allergic conjunctivitis (as well).” The wildfires have caused record-breaking levels of poor air quality over the last few weeks alone.
Last week, Toronto’s air quality was the worst in the world according to a Swiss air quality tracker. Only a few days before, Montreal had the worst air quality in the world, all due to smog produced by wildfires in northern Quebec.
When a person is exposed to irritants in the air, they may feel those effects not just in their lungs, but in their eyes. “It tends to cause burning of the eyes and tearing. Sometimes it can cause some light sensitivity,” Roy said. “More rarely, it might cause you a little bit of thin or watery discharge, but nothing that’s really sort of thick or purulent, which is more typical of an infectious conjunctivitis, which is your classic pink eye.” It’s no surprise that wildfire smoke can be a source of eye irritation, according to Dan Riskin, CTV News’ Science and Technology Specialist.
“Any kind of smoke, from cigarettes to car exhaust can cause severe irritation of the eyes,” he told CTVNews.ca in an email.
HOW TO SOOTHE EYE IRRITATION?
The majority of ways to deal with eye irritation caused by poor air quality are largely “common sense measures,” Roy said. If you pay attention to your symptoms when they are just starting, heading inside can head off those symptoms worsening. “Try to get out of out of that environment as much as possible into an environment with maybe filtered air indoors,” she said. And the other thing is, sometimes it’s just a relief to lubricate the eyes with something like preservative-free artificial teardrops that just helped to sort of dilute the surface irritants that are causing the symptoms in the first place.”
Source: ctvnews.ca/health
Tuesday, May 5, 2026
