Clean-air networks distribute masks and lend purifiers as smoke spreads

Local groups adapt Covid-era resources for wildfire smoke

Clean Air Clubs lend purifiers through community libraries, while Mask Blocs distribute masks through organizers, businesses and community groups. Mendo Clean Air Club is one of more than 40 clean air clubs around the world, according to The Guardian.

In Chicago, Emily Dupree’s lending library had 15 purifiers when wildfire smoke affected the city in July. The equipment was not fully booked, so organizers encouraged people dealing with smoke to reserve purifiers from a storage unit. Dupree said the library filled within hours.

“We are able to mobilize clean air resources extremely quickly because we are not dealing with bureaucracy or red tape,” Dupree said. “We just get the purifiers placed where they’re needed as quickly as possible.”

Dupree launched the first Clean Air Club by lending air purifiers to touring musicians during Covid. She said the lending library began in response to a failure of public health and now serves communities facing worsening wildfires and air quality.

Mask Bloc Los Angeles used a different model during the January 2025 fires, distributing more than 300,000 masks over two weeks.

In rural Mendocino County, Miquette Thompson worked with fellow organizers at Mendo Clean Air Club and began partnering with local businesses to distribute masks. Before that, Thompson had worked with neighbors to distribute free personal protective equipment and Covid tests at farmers markets.

Thompson said her home was covered in smoke for a week as the Feliz and Woodside fires burned nearby and fires in Oregon and Washington sent smoke toward Northern California. The Feliz and Woodside fires had burned more than 1,000 acres, according to The Guardian.

“It’s become not unusual,” Thompson said of walking outside and seeing a hazy sky.

Thompson said the smoke created dangerous air quality in her under-resourced rural community. A recent University of California study found that asthma hospitalizations rise 10% on smoke days. N95 masks filter tiny particles more effectively than cloth or surgical masks, according to The Guardian.

Mask Bloc Delaware organizers Shannon Durkin and her husband, Jimmy, helped launch the group in 2024. In July, they distributed protective equipment in Wilmington as smoke from Canadian wildfires reached the East Coast. The group also distributed KN95 masks at protests, partnered with local Food Not Bombs and DSA chapters, and left masks at local businesses.

Durkin, who has cystic fibrosis, said she felt increasingly excluded from public life after then-President Joe Biden declared the Covid emergency “over” in 2023. She said she had faced discrimination when wearing a respirator and encountered doubt that Covid and other viral illnesses remained dangerous.

The organizers said the work has become more necessary as the current administration casts doubt on masks and the severity of the Covid pandemic, which killed more than 350,000 Americans in 2020.

Thompson said she addresses Covid hesitancy by explaining how smoke can affect health, families and livelihoods. “The big message that’s gotten through in a rural, underfunded region is that we can’t afford to get sick or to get long Covid,” she said. “A lot of us are manual laborers or use our bodies for work in some way. We just don’t have the resources here to manage that.”

Dupree has created a Google document explaining how people can start their own clean-air clubs. She said local groups can help people respond when broader problems feel overwhelming.

“A lot of people, when they’re looking at the various horrors of the world, can feel overwhelmed and then stuck regarding what they should do about it,” Dupree said. “But what this shows us is that even if you decide to focus on one problem, it turns out usually what you come up with is going to be able to pivot and solve other problems that you didn’t initially try to address. There’s a kind of freedom in that.”