In a letter sent to Canada’s ambassador to the US, six Republican members of Congress wrote that wildfire smoke from Canada had been an issue for several years and recently their voters “have had to deal with suffocating Canadian wildfire smoke filling the air to begin the summer”. “Our constituents have been limited in their ability to go outside and safely breathe due to the dangerous air quality the wildfire smoke has created,” the group of House of Representative members from Wisconsin and Minnesota wrote on 7 July. The climate crisis caused 15,000 people in the US to die from toxic wildfire smoke just in the 15-year period until 2020, recent research discovered. Smoke from recent wildfires in Canada has drifted into the Washington metropolitan area, causing a haze in the sky. A spokesperson for the Canadian embassy said: “Canada takes the prevention, response, and mitigation of wildfires very seriously.