Code Orange Air Pollutant Level: UNHEALTHY

Here's your morning Public Health Alert for those of us in DC: We are officially at our first Code Orange unhealthy air quality warning day of the summer.

Wow, this is what you get for watching GMA before work. They cut to the local weather guy who reported DC has it's first Code Orange of the summer. What does this mean? I had no idea, so I googled...

Code Orange: Unhealthy for sensitive groups

•	Temperatures in the upper 80s to low 90s
•	Light winds
•	Slow moving high pressure system with sunny skies

Actions to Protect Your Health:

•	Sensitive Groups – children and active adults, people with respiratory disease, such as asthma and emphysema and heart aliments should limit prolonged outdoor physical activity.

Well, (in your best Church Lady voice:) isn't that special?

Here's hoping Seattle doesn't have get code fucking orange days. Good thing my footy game tonight is indoors. Seriously, this is disgusting. And the only real difference between today, Code Orange, and the next level of badness, Code Red, is a few degrees of temp. If it creeps up into the mid- to high-nineties this afternoon, we'll basically be at code red.

Luckily it's back down to Yellow, or "moderate" again for the weekend, would be awfully ironic to be running the race for the cure on Saturday morning while we are inhaling dangerous particles and pollutants which could, theoretically, someday lead to cancer.

In other public health news, the CDC actually knew this guy, "Passenger X," had a really rare and bad form of TB (XDR TB in fact) and yet they didn't warn anyone in the airline industry that he shouldn't be allowed on 7 transcontinental flights. Bizarre, but planes are petri dishes and TB is very infectious... that said, the CDC thinks he probably infected no one on the flights he took. Let's hope they are right. (UPDATE: here is a better account of the whole affair, thanks WaPo.)