2026-07-24 from cbc.ca
If you've ever felt the familiar throbbing of a migraine any time wildfire smoke fills the air, a new Canadian study suggests you're not alone.
The research, published Friday in the medical journal JAMA, found links between periods of wildfire smoke and a spike in emergency department visits for migraine and other severe headache conditions in Alberta and Ontario.
Researchers from Health Canada looked at nearly one million emergency visits for migraine conditions between 2010 and 2023 to see the impacts of particulate matter known as PM 2.5 — the term for inhalable particles with diameters of 2.5 micrometres or smaller, which is roughly 30 times thinner than a human hair.
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