Canadian wildfires hit air quality in US cities including Chicago and Detroit

The skyline around Lake Michigan was blanketed in haze from Canadian wildfires (Kiichiro Sato/AP)

Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region and in parts of the central and eastern United States.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s AirNow.gov site showed parts of Illinois, lower Michigan and southern Wisconsin had the worst air quality in the US on Tuesday afternoon, and Chicago, Detroit and Milwaukee had air quality categorised as “very unhealthy”.