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“For most of us, it’s how we’re feeling because of the smog that’s going to guide us,” he said.

Lu didn’t know of any scientific data comparing inhaling high levels of PM2.5 to smoking cigarettes but he said there is a new app that does just that.

The app, developed earlier this year by Brazilian designer Marcelo Coelho and Paris-born app developer Amaury Martiny with help from a University of California, Berkeley professor, uses real time pollution data to figure out how many cigarettes you “smoke” while living in various areas.

In Beijing, the equivalent was four cigarettes a day, Los Angeles a half-cigarette, Paris three to six cigarettes a day and Delhi a whopping 20.

In Metro Vancouver on Wednesday, breathing the air was the equivalent of smoking 3.3 cigarettes, according to the app. In Chilliwack, residents smoked the equivalent of seven cigarettes on Wednesday. The rule of thumb, the app said, is one cigarette a day is the rough equivalent of a PM2.5 level of 22.

Lu said he had mixed feelings about equating breathing with cigarette smoking because he wasn’t sure the calculation was scientifically based.

But, he said, “It’s a good way of impressing upon people how air pollution affects us.”

He said the mixture of air pollutants aren’t identical in cigarette smoke and smog “but it does provide people with a reference point” on how dangerous smog can be.

“It’s higher than you think,” he said. “It gives people a kind of ballpark sense and it raises awareness of the dangers of air pollution,” said Lu, adding breathing in poor air for a short period of time isn’t going to do the same damage as smoking every day for years.

Dr. Michael Schwant, a medical health officer for Fraser Health, who wasn’t aware of the app, said such a comparison “could be helpful for messaging.”

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