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Subscribe to RSSA toxic layer of smog is hovering over Salt Lake City, Utah, triggering serious health problems and prompting doctors to declare a state of emergency. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.
Michelle Francis keeps one eye on Utah's air quality index and the other on her 9-year-old daughter's chronic asthma these days. The air pollution is so awful in her Salt Lake City suburb that Francis keeps her daughter indoors on many days to prevent her cough from being aggravated.
"When you add all the gunk in the air, it's too much," Francis said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has singled out the greater Salt Lake region as having the nation's worst air for much of January, when an icy fog smothers mountain valleys for days or weeks at a time and traps lung-busting soot.
The pollution has turned so bad that more than 100 Utah doctors called Wednesday on authorities to immediately lower highway speed limits, curb industrial activity and make mass transit free for the rest of winter. Doctors say the microscopic soot — a shower of combustion particles from tailpipe and other emissions — can tax the lungs of even healthy people.
"We're in a public-health emergency for much of the winter," said Brian Moench, a 62-year-old anesthesiologist and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, which delivered the petition demanding action at the Utah Capitol.
The greater Salt Lake region had up to 130 micrograms of soot per cubic meter on Wednesday, or more than three times the federal clean-air limit, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
That's equivalent to a bad day in the Los Angeles area.
Related: You know it's cold when ski resorts close the mountain
For 2 million Utah residents, there is no escape except to the snow-capped mountains that gleam in the sunshine thousands of feet higher, or to resort towns like Park City, where the Sundance Film Festival is under way.
"I wish there was something we could do about it," Francis, a school teacher 10 miles north of Salt Lake City, said.
Authorities have prohibited wood burning and urged people to limit driving. Vehicle emissions account for more than half of the trapped pollutants.
Utah regulators are working on a set of plans to limit everyday emissions, including a measure to ban the sale of aerosol deodorants and hair spray that contain hydrocarbon propellants. Those plans, however, will take years to show results.
Rick Bowmer / AP
Smog from an inversion hangs over downtown Salt Lake City.
Doctors say people — especially pregnant women and children — should stay indoors, or at least avoid active outdoor exercise under the sickening yellowish haze. Elderly people with heart disease are most at risk, Moench said.
"If you can see it, you don't want to breathe it. Think about what's going into your body," Salt Lake City pediatrician Ellie Brownstein said. "It's essentially like smoking. Instead of breathing clean air, you're breathing particles that make it harder for your lungs to function and get oxygen."
Snow cover amplifies the phenomena called a temperature inversion — Salt Lake City was a foggy freezer box Wednesday at 18 degrees, while Park City basked in sunny 43-degree weather. The warmer air aloft acted like a lid on the frigid valley air, leaving it with no place to go.
For weeks, industrialized cities in northern China have been dealing with bouts of sickening smog several times more toxic than Utah's. But by U.S. standards, Utah's pollution index is off the charts with readings routinely exceeding a scale that tops out at 70 micrograms a cubic meter. The EPA sets a standard for clean air at no more than 35 micrograms.
"People think the health implications are limited to asthma — that's only a drop in the bucket," Moench said. "For every pregnant woman breathing this stuff, this is a threat to her fetus through chromosome damage. It sets people up for a lifelong propensity for all sorts of diseases."
Ravell Call / The Deseret News via AP
An inversion cloud covers downtown Salt Lake City. A group of Utah doctors is declaring a health emergency over the Salt Lake City area's lingering air pollution problem.
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I remember flying to SLC for the 2002 Olympics. As we approached the airport you could see a layer of brown-tinged air above the city. As we descended you could actually see the layer of brown air moving up the windows. It was like flying into a bowl of chicken broth. Got in my rental car, turned on the radio and heard warnings that basically said "Don't breath if you are outside." Fortunately it cleared before the games began.
Wow, This photo looks alot like Mexico City when I flew into the airport there years ago. ick
I guess it's time to go back to riding horses and using buggys and wagons. Gonna make for longer commutes to and from places though. I hope the horse flatulence isn't as bad as the car exhaust.
Almost half of the emissions are coming from somewhere other than cars. It looks like for right now they should probably focus on those sources, since most people need to commute. It's largely up to Congress to help with regulating car emissions, although there could maybe be some local incentives as well.
On the other hand, people can limit their driving if they can. I would if I lived there. I do now (I don't live there). You don't have to sacrifice a ton to make at least a little difference. Plus, you typically save money trying to be more environmentally sound.
This is not uncommon for SLC. You have mountains on 3 sides, a large population, and 4 oil refineries (3 of which supposedly produce products for California only). When I was stationed at Hill AFB (about 500 feet higher than SLC) we used to watch the brown crud creep up from below. When it got to our level, you knew it was bad!
Icy fog traps lung-busting soot over Salt Lake City
... in addition to already being suffocated by their hokey religion.
Hey ohhh.
Restrict deodorant and hairspray but that 98 lb soccer mom can keep tooling around in her $50,000 Hummer.
Looks a lot like Boise too. It's been about 0 degrees for a low for weeks with a California-like, Inland Empire-ish smog. It would be just like home if not for the cold.
GovHater, your post is pointless.
Utah's population is 62.2 percent LDS and that percentage hasn't moved much in the past three years.
That leaves 37% that aren't.
We ARE sick of the religion here, but I think the SMOG is a little more important since the AMA says it's increasing our mortality rates by 14%.
I've been having constant lung and breathing problems for a couple months because of this. Yet our state decided to SCRAP our Air Quality improvement in December.
God Bless America, land that I love, stand beside her, (cough, cough,) and guide (cough, wheeze, cough) her...blah, blah blah. (its all about money)
Perhaps if all the religionistas all stand up straight and pray fervently in the same direction; enough blowhard wind and you might even clear the air there.
You'd think there would be a prayer for this; or perhaps it's god's will (not to mention Joseph Smith's) that breathing be limited half the year.
Can't you get Mitt Romney to fix it? He seems good at talking people out of their money for good causes, like con jobs and Olympic games.
The delicious irony is that Utah is populated with anti-government Tea Party types who would love to gut the EPA of its ability to regulate pollution. If the federal pollution regulations on vehicles and industry were eliminated, the residents of Northern Utah would be dropping dead left and right every winter when these toxic soup inversions occur.
Delicious Irony? I think it's just great that someone with no idea how vacuous they sound, can decide that it's deliciously ironic that my daughter is in the hospital because she can't breathe (asthma + thermal inversion) here in Northern Utah.
I believe, sir, that you are using a stereotype of all Utahns. As stereotyping tends to lead itself to other behaviors, such as prejudice and racism, I guess I may now deduce that those who sterotype are also racists.
Feels great to be superior. Thanks for showing me how.
Signed,
Lifelong Utahn with moderate political beliefs and no religious affiliation.
If this air inversion is so bad for your daughter's health, why do you continue to subject her to such a toxic environment?
These air inversions are a natural phenomena, that have been going on way before the arrival of white people into the valley of the Great Salt Lake. The reason that the inversions are so bad is because of all of the Man Made Pollutants in the atmosphere.
Is it not true that there are alot of Utahns who are Tea Partiers and view the EPA as " Job Destroyers"?
I am sorry that your daughter is ill, but what are you doing to reduce pollution?
PS I was was Utah born and raised, Non-Mormon and Cottonwood HS Class of 80.
Icy fog doesn't trap anything. It's called a thermal inversion.
The air in CA is still worse. What you libtards don't realize is most of the soot is from diesel engines which doctors know cause lung cancer and other chronic diseases. It was Pres Carter who told the country diesel was the future, I wish they were all banned and replaced with natural gas.
http://www.catf.us/diesel/dieselhealth/
I think this is the place but I'm not sure. If I could only see it.
Polution, what polution....me don't see no stinkin' thermal inversion polution, this must be something the Dems made-up. (sarcasm)
Article in Salt Lake Tribune - "Utah docs say inversion causes rare disorder, premature deaths. Air quality » Herbert should declare public health emergency, take stronger steps to curb emissions, doctors say."
sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55686497-78/utah-quality-health-public.html.csp Hey!!!!!
But the skiing is FANTASTIC!!!!!!!
The great Red state of UT, being duped by the big polluters, are learning to live with their own foolishness. The politicians' pockets are lined with the lucre of the polluters, so they blame it on aerosol products, offer free bus rides. The great BLUE city of Park City gets to live in clear air. Park City is where the skiing is wonderful.
thanks god I live in a blue state
I live in SLC, you know that the air is bad when you can smell it. Just walking to my car burns my lungs and makes me cough. Forget living the city, I'm moving up into the mountains somewhere.
SLC/BOISE ----all areas which vote to resist any efforts at the federal level to reduce harmful emissions or combat global warning. Well they still have their guns/Bibles to keep them save from the EPA and their own health care communities which are apparently trying to talk some science into these hardheads.
Boise, Idaho is just as bad. Entirely too many people for the valley, and they all drive. Very little public transportation. The bad air gets trapped against the foothills in both winter and summer.
I've lived in that area (so happy to be away from there!), and also see that their problem is mostly self-inflicted. Hell no to more controls that would clean up the air. They know that the temp inversions will occur, but do nothing. Farmers would burn their fields, knowing that an inversion was on the way. They never cared when I was there. I doubt they really do now.
Um wonder why mass transit is so important?
This is what happens when you live in a bowl...Cold air settles and has no outlet. Add in cars, buses, trucks, etc etc and you get toxic air...
Pollution is a myth conjured up by the liberal media, just like global warming.
Why do inversion layers come and go? It's a sign from a higher power...you can't explain that!
Chuck, Are you serious? Please tell me you are just being sarcastic.
The liberal media lives in Park City, above the inversion layer. So you get to live with your own fantasies.
In 1989 I visited a friend in Park City (where I now live) You could see smoke columns all over the city, going straight up, then all make a 90 degree turn. Inversion if ever I saw it. Being from LA, I commented at the time that if they don't do something soon, learn from LA, they will be in serious trouble. They didn't, they are. Too bad.
Utah is the poster child for NO REGULATION! Ever. So the regulation-averse companies that are the primary culprits spend millions to spin any gov't regulations as immoral, unpatriotic and malicious. So if the population buys it, they get to live with it. It is the cost of being gullible. So now they are going to limit the use of aerosol products. But God forbid they regulate the actual causes.
Thank goodness I live in Park City, over the mountains from SLC.