How to protect yourself from wildfire smoke

As smoke from raging wildfires in Canada continues drifting into parts of the United States, it's critical to know how you can protect yourself from potentially dangerous levels of air pollution.
Wildfire smoke contains hazardous pollutants that include toxic gases and particulate matter — solid particles and liquid droplets that are produced when these fires burn through trees, buildings and other materials. While some particulate matter can be easily seen in the form of soot, smoke also carries smaller particles that can infiltrate the human body and affect health. Experts say this pollution could affect your health whether you're indoors or outdoors.

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This week's most compelling images

Photographers from CBC News, The Canadian Press, Reuters and others document our changing world every day. Here's a selection of the week's top images.

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How leaders can change the ‘mattering deficit' at work

Zach Mercurio is a researcher who specializes in purposeful leadership, mattering, meaningful work, and positive organizational psychology. He works with hundreds of organizations worldwide, and some of his clients include the U.S. Army, USA Wrestling, J.P. Morgan, Delta Air Lines, Marriott International, the government of Canada, and the National Park Service. He also serves as one of motivational speaker, author, and business consultant Simon Sinek's 'optimist instructors.' What's the big idea? When we think about what makes an impressive leader, we often color it in terms like inspiring, courageous, or even heroic. But research shows that, when asked about great leaders in their own lives, people don't talk about grand actions or noble qualities. More likely than not, people point out small interactions— moments —when a leader helped them feel seen or heard, illuminated gifts they didn't know they had, or provided affirmation. Psychologists call this sense of significance mattering, and the best leaders have trained in and practice the skill of showing people their value. Below, Zach shares five key insights from his new book, The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance. Listen to the audio version—read by Zach himself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. We're facing a mattering deficit. Let me take you back 10 years to a hospital room. I was meeting my newborn son. I remember looking down at this tiny crying human, and he tilted his head, locked eyes with mine, and reached his arms out frantically. When I reached back, he gripped my index finger and wouldn't let go. His crying stopped, and his whole body calmed. I was experiencing 6 million years of fine-tuned programming. Scientists call that grip I felt the 'grasp reflex'—an automatic action we take to secure our first caring relationship. From your first breath, survival depended on mattering to someone. None of us would be listening to or reading this if, at some point, we hadn't mattered enough to someone so they'd keep us alive. As we grow up and go to work, the survival instinct to matter evolves into the psychological need to feel seen, heard, valued, and needed. When this need is met, we experience mattering. Mattering is distinct from belonging or inclusion. Belonging is feeling part of and connected to a group. Inclusion is being able to contribute to a group. Mattering is knowing you're significant to individual members of that group. When we experience mattering, we flourish. We're more motivated and grittier and experience greater well-being. But when we feel that we don't matter, we languish and either act out in desperation or withdraw. Imagine the absolute panic of a child reaching out and finding no one. In a way, that's what's happening today. Too many of us are experiencing the same stress of feeling insignificant. In January 2025, Gallup reported that employee engagement is at a 10-year low. If we were an organization, seven out of 10 of us would be emotionally uninvested in our work. That's despite services to improve engagement becoming a $1 billion industry. 'The average adult sends 30 to 40 text-based messages daily and spends more time in meetings than ever—yet we're still lonely.' So, what's going on? Two data points stand out: Just four out of every 10 employees in the Gallup sample group felt that someone at work cares about them as a person, and only 30% believe their potential is invested in. Last year, a different poll showed that 30% of people felt invisible at work, and repeated surveys reveal that six out of 10 people feel underappreciated. We're not facing a disengagement crisis. We're facing a mattering deficit. The most glaring symptom of this deficit is loneliness. The advice to solve this has been to connect more. The result has been that we're in more meetings and on more platforms. The average adult sends 30 to 40 text-based messages daily and spends more time in meetings than ever—yet we're still lonely. Research shows that the quantity of interactions doesn't matter much when it comes to reducing loneliness. The quality does. To have a quality interaction, people need to experience what researchers call companionate love —receiving the interpersonal behaviors of attention, respect, and affirmation. The opposite of loneliness isn't having more people around you; it's feeling like you matter to the people around you. That's why just putting down our phones won't reduce disconnection; what we do after we put down our phones will. The solution isn't to connect more; it's to relearn the skills to connect better by showing people they matter to us. 2. Mattering happens in moments. Think about when you most feel that you matter to others. How many of you are thinking about getting your direct deposit, or when you won Employee of the Month? If you're like most people we posed this question to, you're thinking about small interactions. Mattering happens in moments. Jane is a custodian at the university where I do research. She was part of a study we did on how frontline service workers experience meaning. She told me she only took the job because she was nearly homeless and needed to put food on the table. Her friends kept telling her cleaning was a 'dirty job,' and she started internalizing that. She told me that during her first month, she would clock in, clock out, and continually think: Why couldn't I have done something more with my life? She said, 'I felt useless and worthless.' But then, she described to me how a couple of minutes changed everything. A supervisor noticed she was struggling. He invited her into a training room, handed her a dictionary, and asked her to read the definition of custodian: 'A person responsible for looking after a building and everyone in it.' 'That's you,' he told her. She looked at me and said, 'That was the first time in my life someone made me feel worthy and important.' Realizing she was responsible for a building and its people changed her beliefs about herself and her job. She's been there for 18 years. That's the power of a moment of mattering. The best leaders tend to turn regular interactions into moments of mattering. 3. There's a difference between knowing someone and noticing them. There's a difference between knowing someone and noticing them. You can know your best friend but not notice that they're struggling. You can know a team member but not notice that they feel unheard. Jane's supervisor noticed she was struggling and took action. Noticing is the deliberate act of paying attention to the details, ebbs, and flows of others' lives and offering an action to show them we're thinking of them. Noticing takes time, attention, and practice. 'You can know a team member but not notice that they feel unheard.' In one distribution center where I worked, there were 20 teams that all scored low on employee engagement surveys, with one extreme outlier that consistently showed high engagement. When I met with that team, they all told me some version of: 'It's our supervisor. She just gets us. We'd do anything for her.' So, I asked her what she did. She pulled out a black Moleskine notebook. Every Friday, she wrote down one thing she noticed about each team member—nerves about a meeting, a struggle on a task, a child starting a new sport. Then on Monday, she reviewed her notes and scheduled micro-check-ins, starting with, 'I remember last week. …' She said to me, 'You know, Zach, there's magic in being remembered.' We've come to call it her 'noticing notebook.' She also asked her team two questions every week: 'What would you do if you were me?' and 'What are you struggling with, and how can I help?' Leaders who are great noticers tend to do these three things: They have a process and practice for observing the details of people's work and lives. They note those details, which is a powerful way to retrain our attention. They share back what they observed. Noticing others creates understanding and understanding creates trust. 4. Affirmation can be more powerful than appreciation or recognition. When Jane's supervisor defined custodian, he provided her with indisputable evidence of her significance. That's what makes affirmation different and more powerful than appreciation or recognition. Appreciation is a form of gratitude for who someone is. Recognition is a form of gratitude for what someone does. Affirmation reveals how someone's uniqueness makes a unique difference. One way to affirm someone is to give more meaningful gratitude. Any time you say, 'Thank you' or 'Good job,' go one step further and show people the difference they make and exactly how they make it. First, name people's unique gifts. Everyone offers us four unique gifts every day: Strengths: what they love and they're good at Purpose: the impact they make Perspective: how they see the world Wisdom: what only they can teach us from living their life Second, show them vividly the unique impact they make. For example, a facilities manager I worked with at the National Park Service would take photos of park visitors using projects his team worked on. He had a process of emailing them every Friday and attaching the pictures. He simply wrote: Look what you did. Thank you. He gave them indisputable evidence of their significance. 5. When people feel replaceable, they will act replaceable. To feel that we matter, we must feel needed. In 1913, the French agricultural engineer Max Ringelmann had groups of students pull on a rope as hard as possible. The rope was attached to a device called a dynamometer to measure force. Then, he had the same students pull the rope as hard as they could as individuals. He added up the force readings. Who do you think exerted the most total force: groups or individuals? It was the individuals. Why? Because they knew they and their effort were indispensable. 'To feel that we matter, we must feel needed.' When people feel replaceable, they act replaceable. But when people feel irreplaceable, they tend to act irreplaceable. When I interviewed people and asked them when they most felt that they mattered, people frequently mentioned some version of these five words being said to them: 'If it wasn't for you …' Think of someone you rely on. Now think of the last time you've told them, 'If it wasn't for you …' If you say these words to them, you'll see and feel the power of mattering, and you'll be putting into practice a skill that sets great leaders apart from the rest: showing people how they matter.

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2 hours ago

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Fast Five Quiz: Alcohol Use Disorder

Alcohol use disorder remains a significant public health challenge in the United States, affecting more than 29 million individuals and contributing to more than 140,000 deaths each year. Despite its high prevalence and devastating health consequences, alcohol use disorder often goes underdiagnosed and undertreated. A widely accepted heuristic framework conceptualizes alcohol use disorder as a 3-stage cycle, binge/intoxication, withdrawal/negative affect, and preoccupation/anticipation, offering clinicians a lens through which to understand its complex neurobiological underpinnings and diverse clinical presentations. Although effective behavioral therapies and several US Food and Drug Administration-approved medications are available for the treatment of alcohol use disorder, these interventions remain markedly underused, contributing to a substantial treatment gap. How much do you know about alcohol misuse and alcohol use disorder? Test your knowledge with this quick quiz. Alcohol misuse in alcohol use disorder can vary, from a pattern of intermittent episodes of binge drinking, to a pattern of prolonged heavy drinking over longer periods of time, to a continual drinking pattern due to fear of alcohol withdrawal. A heavy drinking day is defined as consuming 4 or more drinks for females and 5 or more drinks for males in a single day. In the United States, a standard drink is defined as 12 oz of beer, 5 oz of wine, and 1.5 oz of a distilled beverage. This definition helps identify patterns of alcohol misuse that might indicate alcohol use disorder. Learn more about alcoholism guidelines. Alcohol use disorder is more common in males, although the gap is narrowing. Although males are more likely to engage in frequent and heavy consumption, have a greater consumption of spirits, and experience higher rates of alcohol use mortality, females are at greater risk for certain health complications from alcohol, such as liver damage and experiencing higher blood alcohol concentrations at the same level of intake. Learn more about alcoholism presentation. The most frequent central nervous system consequence of persistent alcohol consumption is alcoholic cerebellar degeneration. This condition results from alcohol toxicity leading to damage of the cerebellum, the brain area responsible for coordination and balance. It commonly presents with gait instability, and balance problems, affecting 10%-25% of individuals with chronic alcohol use. Wernicke's encephalopathy is an acute, reversible condition caused by thiamine deficiency; it is not the most frequent long-term central nervous system consequence of alcohol consumption. Korsakoff syndrome is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder that often follows untreated Wernicke's encephalopathy and is caused by malnutrition in combination with prolonged drinking. Although chronic alcohol use can lead to alcohol-related dementia, it occurs less frequently than alcoholic cerebellar degeneration. Learn more about Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. Alcoholic polyneuropathy, caused by prolonged alcohol use and often associated with nutritional deficiencies like thiamine deficiency, typically presents as a symmetrical sensory neuropathy. Females have a greater rate of alcoholic polyneuropathy. The most common symptoms of alcoholic polyneuropathy are ataxia, pain, and paresthesia. Other frequent symptoms include burning pain in the arms, soles of the feet and toes, and cramping in the calves and hands. Skin alterations do occur in alcoholic polyneuropathy, but they are considered secondary or less common symptoms compared with the hallmark neurological signs. The muscle weakness seen in alcoholic polyneuropathy primarily affects distal muscles, like the feet and hands. Hair loss can happen as a minor trophic change, but it is not a defining or common symptom of alcoholic polyneuropathy. Learn more about alcoholic neuropathy. Benzodiazepines are the recommended class of medication for treating alcohol withdrawal syndrome because they are effective in preventing severe complications of alcohol withdrawal syndrome, such as seizures and delirium tremens, and are considered the criterion standard treatment due to their fast onset, long duration, and safety profile. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors do not target the GABAergic or glutamatergic systems involved in alcohol withdrawal syndrome, making them ineffective for managing withdrawal symptoms. Beta-blockers can help control some autonomic symptoms like tremors or tachycardia but do not prevent seizures or delirium tremens, so they are not appropriate as primary treatment. N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor antagonists can modulate glutamate activity but lack enough evidence to be first-line therapy for alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Learn more about alcohol withdrawal syndrome.