Storms help air quality
The air quality trend in Logan was up yesterday with the snow storm but residents should still be wary of unnecessary driving.
Two weeks ago in Salt Lake City the Department of Environmental Quality announced a Web site for continual information on air quality. The new Web site, www.airquality.utah.gov, is now up and running and includes information from all over the state.
Driving is what air quality researchers are focusing on now, and not wood stoves.
For Salt Lake City this is a new idea, but Cache Valley has been doing this all along.
“We call ours red and yellow air days while they’ve been calling them red and yellow burn days,” said Grant Koford the environmental health scientist for the Bear River Health Department.
“Our problem all along has been vehicle emissions, causing the particular problems that we have,” he said. The BRHD has been pushing vehicle miles traveled (VMT’s) as the biggest crontibutor to air quality for several years.
The new focus for SLC will help reduce emissions, which are the true problem, said Koford.
“It’ll put the emphasis where the emphasis should be and that’s on reducing the miles traveled, reducing pollution,” he said.
In the winter months the particle matter (PM 2.5) is watched daily, but in the summer it doesn’t need to be regulated as much. But SLC and the Wasatch Front have ozone problems.
“We haven’t had an ozone problem yet but if they lower the ozone standard then we’re probably going to be facing some problems there too,” he said. He said the problems come when Logan has a storm in the early winter and then no more storms occur, but the valley stays cold.
The PM 2.5 allowable concentration has been lowered from 65 to 35 in the last year. This was changed to help those with health problems.
The Environmental Protection Agency reports nationwide air standards have been raised and make cities look bad, but the standard is to help citizens.
“The standard is designed to protect the most sensitive individuals, those people that have asthma, lung disease, children and the elderly,” Koford said.
The new Web site will be available for anyone to check the rating before they go outside. If residents check before they leave the house they can know how much PM 2.5 is in the air.
The storms this past week have helped the PM ratings go down to the single digits.
“Storms are wonderful. They clean us out. If we could have a storm every third or fourth day throughout the winter we’d be great. We get moisture we need and it’d keep the air clean,” said Koford.
“Anything they can do to reduce the VMT, whether that’s carpool with somebody or that’s a consolidated trip or stay in for lunch or whatever, reduce the errands they run, anything keeps their engine from running will help our problem in the winter,” he said.
-ranaebang@cc.usu.edu