On Wednesday afternoon, as New York City residents attempted to make sense of the orange haze that blanketed the area, a Chinese delivery worker who services restaurants in south Brooklyn carried on despite the dangerous air conditions, dropping off orders over the course of his 10-hour shift.
“If you’re out for long periods of time, you feel your breathing become more difficult. It starts to hurt,” the delivery worker, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said in Mandarin, through an NBC News translation. “It’s like cigarette smoke. The more you’re out, the more your throat hurts.”
The Brooklyn-based worker, 38, is one of countless delivery people who continued to brave the conditions outside despite the city’s air quality being the worst in the world during a period of time Wednesday, due to the persistent smoke caused by more than 400 wildfires burning in Canada. Despite advisories across all five boroughs, many delivery workers said they couldn’t afford to miss a day of work, particularly since there is currently no minimum wage requirement for many who operate as independent contractors.
The poor air conditions continued Thursday, with officials advising all vulnerable people to stay indoors, close windows and doors, and use air purifiers. Residents were also advised to limit outdoor time and wear N95 or KN95 masks.
But workers continued to make deliveries on bikes, motorcycles, scooters and other vehicles that made them susceptible to the open air. Antonio Solis, 36, an app-based delivery worker who is part of the Los Deliveristas Unidos collective, said that for many others like him, taking days off work means being unable to pay rent and bills on time and risking not having money to send back to their families in their countries of origin.
“We don’t have that choice,” Solis told NBC News in Spanish.
And business only continued to boom, the workers said. They pointed out they rely on tips, which often spike…
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