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Unlike us, wildfire smoke has little health effect on Michigan’s tree canopy 59%
By Amanda LeClaire83%
7/24/2026, 6:49:03 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 12 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Biased Writer Voice, and Optimism Bias, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 20.7% saturation with 56 hits. Analysis detected 312 faulty-reasoning hits from 270 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 54.9% and a BS Rank of 59% (9,175 of 21,887 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 58.10% of the article peer group.
Michigan’s air quality declined dangerously earlier this month due to wildfire smoke from Minnesota and Canada.
Pollutants in the smoke can have long-term health consequences for humans, pets, and wildlife.
However, for trees themselves the health effects are less consequential.
Wayne State University forestry professor Dan Kashian says that while our tree canopy is important for converting carbon dioxide into life-supporting oxygen, days or even weeks of heavy smoke plumes is unlikely to harm Michigan’s trees.
He says the main effect would be on the amount of sunlight on smokey days.
Kashian says, “Trees need to photosynthesize…anything that affects the amount of light that they’re receiving is going to affect how well they can grow.”
According to Kashian, harmful pollutants from wildfire smoke can settle on leaves but are often washed away by rain without lasting harm to the tree’s health.
“But when you’re talking about a couple of days of heavy smoke like this, especially when it’s hot, it can actually help them because they don’t really like really high temperatures either,” Kashian says.
This story is a part of WDET’s ongoing series, the Detroit Tree Canopy Project .
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The post Unlike us, wildfire smoke has little health effect on Michigan’s tree canopy appeared first on WDET 101.9 FM .
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89%flagged-word coverageDan Kashian
135 attributed words70% of attributed speech72% writer coverage
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