How to Help My Elderly Aunt from Smokey Neighbors

Spare the Air Day burn bans unfortunately do not include outdoor fires for cooking, so it is not illegal for them to be grilling then. Not sure there is a huge amount she can do legally--the least expensive option might be to gift them a gas grill and ask that they please use this instead of the charcoal. This will reduce the smoke considerably, and is also the Air District's recommendation for those who want to grill on Spare the Air Days, so she could frame it that way as well. (Gas grills can also address many of the health concerns around grilling, which are tied not to grilling itself but to burning/charring food--something that can happen with both indoor and outdoor cooking.)

Grilling is fine during spare the air days (unless they're doing it with a wood fire). Perhaps in addition to the suggestion already offered she could get an air purifier (or a couple) if she doesn't already have? Those have been really helpful to us during the past few months and they can really increase air quality indoors (as well as help eliminate odors). 

I am really sorry that your aunt is coping with a situation that distresses her. All fires should be banned on Spare the Air days, but unfortunately they are not. We never grill on those days and we take the fires here very seriously. But we LOVE to grill and do so all the time, whenever we can - still super popular with our family and all friends, cancer or no ;-) Cheers.

Can she get an outdoor fan to blow the smoke away or ask them to use one? What if they moved the bbq to another spot in their yard?
 

I don’t think it’s reasonable to ask neighbors to stop grilling. And yes, we’re still grilling. 

I'm so sorry! I wish we could get the Bay Area Air Quality District to do something about grilling and leaf blowers. Both these activities cause so much air pollution and so many disagreements between neighbors. For the time being, these activities are perfectly legal at any time and place, so there is no way to get a seize and desist order. 

The only things I can suggest is blocking up the vents, tightening up the house with weatherstripping, and getting air cleaners. Although I would be tempted to blast them with loud music when they approach the grill. Also completely legal during the dinner hour. 

Grilling is so last century!. We need to create a new way to feed a crowd outdoors without polluting the neighborhood. What will the new style be? 

Spare the Air Days only restrict the burning of wood. A charcoal or gas grill is not illegal, and at worse contributes minutely to the smoke during bad wildfire days; in addition, I'm not sure why you think that the grilling of meat is not OK because of the pandemic. The pandemic makes people cook at home more, so it makes sense that your neighbors are cooking more, and perhaps they just enjoy grilling. We certainly do. I can see that you are concerned for the health of your elderly aunt, but I hope you can take a step back and recognize that the fact that smoke from an outdoor grill is not likely to do much harm. Please do not involve a lawyer and wreck your aunt's relationship with her neighbors. The neighbors are not doing anything wrong, or even doing anything out of the ordinary. If you are concerned for your aunt's health, consider that the wildfire smoke is much much worse, because it contains toxic chemicals from the burning of buildings, cars, and other structures, and focus on that instead. My mother had weak lungs and ill health and we spent some time fixing the HVAC system in her house. There are HEPA filters you can install in all the vents of your house that will filter out anything that might come through a vent, so even if smoke came through a vent (not likely as most HVAC vents are not open to the outside), anything would be filtered out. Also be sure that the filter she has on her AC or furnace is changed and is set to filter out as many pollutants as you can. And lastly, an air purifier is a must nowadays in California. If your aunt just doesn't enjoy the smell of grilled meat, an air purifier set on high can clear a room of the smell of meat very quickly. Whenever we cook and something smokes up in the kitchen, we turn the air purifier on high, and very quickly we can no longer smell it. Again, I appreciate your concern for your aunt. It shows that you care. But don't latch onto small problems that might not be a big deal and which you can't fix (like her neighbors), but use your energy to focus on larger issues that you actually can fix (like fixing up her house to handle toxic wildfire smoke). 

You're misinformed: grilling outdoors isn't illegal during Spare the Air days, though propane or gas are recommended (not required) in lieu of wood/charcoal. https://www.sparetheair.org/understanding-air-quality/wood-burning-rule

It's not clear from your post whether the neighbors are grilling with propane or charcoal. The former isn't going to fill the house with "gas".  If it's charcoal, it would be better to offer to pitch in towards a propane grill than to demand they stop grilling altogether. 

I think there *might* be a larger issue here with your elderly aunt maybe not being able to manage a totally independent living situation, which sometimes requires you to do things like open/close your vents, negotiate with neighbors (prior to a lawyer being involved!), change your routine or set-up to accommodate what's going on around you. Looking back on my in-laws' aging process, neighbor beefs were an early sign of needing a more controlled living situation, which could be senior apartments on the independent side of the spectrum, to assisted living on the other side of the spectrum. Please take that step back and ask yourself if this is actually not a one-off but a data point in the continuum of being unable to live totally independently.