Is the notorious Salt Lake City inversion creeping up the canyon?

For the time being it’s unclear, but as Utah campaigns to clean up the air gain speed and support, Park City residents are vowing not to be left behind

The launch of the third chapter of the 10-month-old organization, Utah Moms for Clean Air, occurred last Wednesday at the Park City Library. Spearheaded by Park City residents Kathy Loft and Mary Jacquin, the founders of the chapter, nearly 30 attended, including the head and founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air, Cherise Miller Udell. “We don’t live in a bubble,” said Loft, who is also seeking a seat in the state House of Representatives. “There’s no magic curtain that comes down and protects us from the effects of the dirty air in the Salt Lake Valley.”

Udell began with the story of her newfound environmental activism, which she said began at the breakfast table while poring over a Salt Lake Tribune op-ed column written by Dr. Brian Moench, founder of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. “There were statistics that just mortified me as a mother,” she recalled, sharing the one that resonated with her the most: that a “Red Alert” day in Salt Lake is more or less “the equivalent of smoking half a pack of cigarettes.”

“We had 22 Red Alert days last year, which means my children smoked 11 packs of cigarettes,” she said.

Udell began by e-mailing 100 people about her concern. She reported the list of supporters has grown to 800. Already the group has helped to sponsor legislation to aid its cause. This year, it got behind House Bill 146, which called for the state to allocate 500,000 to retrofit school buses with filters in order to deplete their carcinogenic diesel exhaust, and the bill successfully passed the state House and the Senate. The group has also had an effect on Rocky Mountain Power and its plans to build new coal-fired plants, Udell said.

She explained Utah Moms’ momentum could likely be attributed to the fact that she and other mothers “are just doing what we should be doing.”

“Ironically, one of the reasons why Utah Moms have been so effective is because we depoliticized the political process,” she observed. “As moms, our agenda is so transparent. If moms are out rallying for something, no one questions our motives, no one questions our agenda.”

The moral imperative championed by Udell was echoed by Moench himself, who joined the meeting to provide scientific backing to underscore the urgency Utah Moms’ environmental efforts, as well as his own. The year-old mission of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment has been to protect “the health and well-being of the citizens of Utah by promoting science-based education and interventions that result in progressive, measurable improvements to the environment.” And Moench’s hour-long presentation with slides referenced an alarming landslide of statistics.

“If you are an adult and you get this kind of information and you choose to blow it off and you can dismiss this information in terms of its impact on other adults, in addition to being stupid, you could be accused of being callous,” he told his audience. “If, in addition to that, you can dismiss what I’m going to tell you about the effect of air pollution on children, then I would say you have a problem with entering in to the moral abyss.”

Much of Moench’s hyperbole was delivered with a wink, but his cold evidence supported a very bleak outlook for Utahns and their children, beginning with the fact, that statistically speaking, up to 2,000 deaths in Utah each year can be attributed to air pollution mostly from cardiovascular problems; others from cancer — with children being “uniquely vulnerable,” because of their high metabolism rate, greater demand for oxygen and immature immune systems.

At a physiological level, Moench explained, the body does not differentiate

between cigarette smoke and pollution. In a study of the effects of secondhand smoking, he reported, blood tests confirmed that, like smoke, inhaling contaminated air kicks up the systemic inflammatory process in a person’s arterial system.

Three grave threats are contributing to Utah’s increasingly toxic air quality, according to Moench. First, he said that Utah can expect automobile traffic responsible for an average of 60 percent of the toxins in the air to double in 20 years. Second, he said Utah is “experiencing the greatest global warming phenomenon of any spot on earth outside of the arctic,” citing a study unveiled within the last week. Global warming is responsible for increasing air pollution because it extends the forest-fire season by two months and increases water vapor in the air that increases the toxicity because it attracts acidic particles. Third, he noted, 95 percent of the state’s energy is generated from coal-fired plants, which contribute a significant amount of sulfur dioxide emissions the air, a danger second only to automobile-emitted nitrogen oxide compounds.

But how does Park City compare to the Salt Lake Valley, an area that consistently ranks in the top 25 U.S. cities for worst acute spikes in air pollution? The statistics have yet to arrive, he said.

Still, the solution Moench espoused is one of prevention. His Utah Physicians group actively seeks to halt the construction of three coal-fired power plants on the Nevada-Utah border and encourages citizens to drive at 55 miles per hour on freeways, turn their thermostats down to 65 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, and up to 75 in the summer. He also recommended the members of the audience e-mail Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.

Listening to the speakers at the library’s podium was a diverse mix of residents including men, single women as well as few moms, including Sarah Elbert, a Park City resident for 18 years. “I came today because I’ve noticed how much town has changed over the years,” she shared. “It’s time to pay attention and be smarter.”

Also in the audience was a handful of local government officials, including Park City Manager Tom Bakaly and Summit County Commissioner Sally Elliott, a founding member of the organization that would later become Recycle Utah. Encouraged by Alex Loft, Kathy Loft’s husband, she had seen Moench’s presentation before, and appeared less shaken by his statistics than the rest of the crowd, who periodically gasped at the facts during the presentation.

“I’ve been concerned about our environment for many years,” she explained. “Numerous times, I have been going down to Salt Lake City or to Provo and I’ve seen the pinkish cloud of smoke riding up the canyon. The county is primed to do anything we could possibly do to keep our air clean and pure.”

Bob Swenson, Summit County Health Department’s environmental heath director, remains confident in the cleanliness of the area’s atmosphere adding that the Utah Division of Air Quality didn’t think it was worth the time to test the particulates in Summit County’s air.

But the community showed an interest and Swenson is now awaiting the results of Summit County’s first air-quality test to confirm or invalidate his assessment. He reported 60 air samples of PM 2.5 a measurement of particulate matter of a certain microscopic size — were taken from two monitoring stations between Dec. 18, 2007, and the end of March, 2008. Of the samples, six at higher elevations were sent to laboratories in Oregon to test for 15 chemicals for $250 per sample, he said.

Due to the expense of testing and his belief that Summit County’s air is “in fine shape,” he doesn’t anticipate annual testing. Swenson expects the next test of the county’s air would likely be in five years. Summit County doesn’t currently “exceed the maximum Environmental Protection Agency Standard,” he assured. “And as near as we can tell we have clean air and there’s really no indication of the spillover from Salt Lake.”

For more information on Utah Moms for Clean air, contact the organization via e-mail at [email protected] or log onto utahmomsforcleanair.org.

‘What happens in China isn’t staying in China. It’s coming to Park City.’

The following information was shared by Dr. Brian Moench, co-founder and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, at the inaugural meeting of Utah Moms for Clean Air’s Park City Chapter:

From China to Utah

According to Moench, China is building one to two coal-fired power plants per week, in part because of American companies’ decision to export manufacturing to that country has increased a demand for energy and the pollution knows no borders.

“The deserts of Mongolia kick up dust from winds that then combine with industrial emissions on the eastern coast of China and together they drift across the Pacific and arrive on the West Coast of the United States about two or three days later an entire potpourri of toxicity that is in some parts of the year contributing to about 80 percent of the air pollution on the West Coast. Some of that is appearing in the State of Utah and it is appearing in Park City.”

Lifespan

Given the current state of air quality, on average, statistically speaking, those who live along the Wasatch Front have their life spans shortened by two years.

Global warming

“Utah is now experiencing the greatest global warming phenomenon of any spot on Earth outside of the arctic,” said Moench. “Over the last five years, the temperature in Utah has increased two degrees over its historical average.”

Global warming contributes to a forest-fire season that is about two months longer than it used to be 20 years ago, which poses a big threat to air quality, according to Moench. “A large forest fire in one day in Southern California can put out as much air pollution as all of their vehicles in a year’s time.”

Toxic diesel exhaust

School buses, public buses, and trucks that run on diesel fuel are especially toxic, because their emissions contain ultra-fine particulate matter “so tiny it can be directly absorbed into your brain from your nose,” Moench said.

To learn more, visit the Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment’s Web site by logging on to uphe.org.