Airborne pollution study is getting set for take off

Researchers want to find out how emissions from such fires - sparked by dry, hot summer conditions - affect levels of atmospheric pollutants, such as ozone, which is linked with respiratory illnesses.

The team, led by the University of Edinburgh, will spend three weeks taking daily flights in an atmospheric research aircraft along the eastern coast of Canada.

They will travel to Halifax in Nova Scotia tomorrow and the project is due to start on Sunday.

They hope to find out more about how the pollutants eventually disperse in the air to estimate how North American forest fires affect air pollution elsewhere in the world.

The research is being carried out in a collaboration involving the universities of York and Leeds as well as Dalhousie University in Canada.