Smoke from wildfires across the prairies is blanketing eastern Canada and parts of the US and drifting as far as Europe. Wildfire smoke is dangerous, particularly for people with existing respiratory conditions. But that haze may also contain other toxins, like lead, mercury and arsenic, pollutants that are present in waterways and forests, the legacy of mining, according to Dr. Owen Sutton, a Canada Wildfire Network post-doctoral fellow modelling the interaction of wildfire and peatland ecohydrology in the McMaster University Ecohydrology lab