The San Francisco Bay Area is being engulfed in hazardous levels of air pollution as meteorologists predicted that it’s only going to get worse on Friday and Saturday after the wildfires that started in Napa and Sonoma, California.

The pollution in the region is being described as “the worst air quality ever recorded”, even comparable to that of Beijing, a city known for its gray haze, according to SFGate.

Meteorologist Charles Bell explained that the “unhealthy level” of smoke might lessen on early Friday.

“We might get a little bit of a break early Friday and then late Friday, the winds will pick up again and bring smoke down across the entire region,” Bell said.

Meteorologist Brian Garcia had the same sentiments, stating, “We’re going to see a really strong settling of the smoke in the Bay Area on Friday and Saturday. Not to mince words. It’s going to be really bad. It’s not going to be fun.”

“It’s going to be really bad. It’s not going to be fun,” Garcia added.

On October 12, some parts of San Francisco already had an air quality of 151-200, an index level rivaling that of China’s, which hit the 482 mark back in January, according to the municipal environmental protection bureau.

Residents in the affected areas wore unsightly masks to protect them from the pollution as they walked around or commuted to work. Meanwhile, the threat of prematurely dying from air pollution is very much real regardless of where it’s occurring in the world.

Richard Muller, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, revealed that air pollution is responsible for 4,400 deaths everyday in China. According to Siver Times, air pollution claims the lives of about half a million people in Europe, dying prematurely every year.

It’s no wonder countries like China are taking extreme preventive measures to rid the country of casualties stemming from heavily polluted air.

Featured Image Screenshot via YouTube / CBS SF Bay Area