If you woke up this morning to hazy skies, a general burning smell in the air and ash on your car ... you're not alone.  Welcome to the start of wildfire season in Southern California.

The Post fire in Gorman fire that broke out over the weekend has been sending clouds of smoke both east out to Las Vegas and then back west over the LA basin.  And as a result we're all breathing in the smoke from burning trees, brush and structures .... 

KNX chief correspondent Charles Feldman called up Mary Johnson, she's a principal research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health who specializes in the effects of air pollution ... he asked her if it's safe to assume that wildfire smoke it increasingly becoming a public health crisis.

Smoke produced from wildfires over the last decade is almost single-handedly responsible for reversing dramatic gains this country has made on reducing levels of air pollution since the 1950's.