A breath of fresh air
It’s posted on your Webmail account. It’s sticking in your lungs. And a group of USU students is hoping that by the end of next week, Cache Valley air pollution will finally be on your mind.
The Environmental Coalition of Students (ECOS) is holding Air Quality Week Feb.20-24. By distributing information, sponsoring panel discussions and challenging students to use alternate means of transportation, the group is seeking to promote awareness of a problem that it says did not arise out of a clear blue sky: Cache Valley has dirty air.
“I don’t want to be breathing it in,” said Laura Sherry, the president of ECOS. “A lot of people get sick from it. People who have asthma – it makes it worse. I think that’s really sad that this is a huge problem when there’s something we can do about it.”
Logan’s notorious inversions have not made their usual appearance this year because the weather has been unusually warm, said Randy Martin, an associate professor of environmental engineering. But he said in past years, the levels of PM 2.5 – fine particulate matter comprised of dust and soot – have exceeded EPA standards several times.
“You could definitely call it terrible,” Martin said.
The trouble with PM 2.5, he said, is that the fine particles, which measure about one-seventh the width of a strand of human hair, stick in the lungs, resulting in health problems and an overall diminution of quality of life. Martin said health effects can begin to be observed when levels of PM 2.5 reach 40 micrograms per cubic meter. Over the past several winters, levels in Logan have reached as high as 65 micrograms per cubic meter.
“It aggravates existing problems, so people with asthma and other respiratory problems are going to have health problems with all the pollution,” Martin said. “I think there’s growing awareness, but there is still a general lack of motivation to do something about it.”
Melissa Sanders, a junior majoring in conservation restoration ecology, said ECOS is challenging students to do just that by using alternative means of transportation that week. The group is encouraging students to pay attention to how many miles they travel that way and logging those miles online at http://cc.usu.edu/~bike/mileage.shtml.
“We’re just encouraging people to walk, bus or bike to places they need to go,” Sanders said. “Our goal is to accumulate enough miles through the week that we could actually add up enough miles to go all the way across the country.”
Matt Jemmett, a junior majoring in recreation resource management who is involved with the project, said he, too, is guilty of just hopping in his car and running errands, but hopes that people recognize that there are other ways to get around.
“If we can keep one person out of their car, it’ll help,” Jemmett said. “People don’t need to drive every stinking place they go. It’d do everybody some good to walk a mile. I mean, obesity is the leading cause of death now. It passed smoking.”
But walking that mile in Logan may actually be similar to smoking. According to research presented at the USU Air Quality Symposium in September by C. Arden Pope, breathing in PM 2.5 levels of 20 micrograms per cubic meter is the same as living with a spouse who smokes one pack of cigarettes a day, in terms of long-term adverse health effects. Pope, a BYU economics professor whose specialty is environmental economics, said at the symposium that Logan’s three-year average of PM 2.5 levels is 13 micrograms per cubic meter.
“Living in Logan is like living with somebody who smokes half a pack a day,” said Jemmett, who has been researching the work of Pope and others for Air Quality Week. “We’re all just breathing in second-hand smoke.”
Even people without pre-existing respiratory problems can be affected by the poor air quality, said Jack Greene, chair of the Quality Air Utah committee. He said the air quality in Logan was so bad last year that schools stopped sending children out to recess and healthy people were being told not to go out and exercise. He said those bad winters were the reason QUAC was founded.
“It was so wretchedly bad that there was deep enough concern that citizens said, ‘We’re going to do something about it,'” Greene said. “It’s a real serious health issue. One-third of our population is at risk, the young, the old. Most people don’t realize how serious it is.”
Greene said even though the air has been better this year, it hasn’t been great. There need only be a few more yellow burn days for Cache Valley to be classified “non-attainment” by the EPA, a status that designates an area as having unacceptable air quality. He said if that happens, the EPA will require the governments of Cache County and Franklin County, Idaho, to develop a plan to improve air quality.
Such a plan may have serious consequences for local transportation and economics, Greene said, as additional regulations may discourage new businesses from coming into the valley, or encourage existing ones to leave.
“The EPA can do anything and everything it thinks necessary to make us come back into compliance. It’s a really ugly, scary thing here,” Greene said. “Everybody would be involved, because we’re all a part of this.”
Greene said he’d like to see proactive solutions. He said 10 percent of cars cause 40 percent of particulates in Logan’s air, and that taking those cars off the road by requiring emissions testing in Cache County would help. He added that people should use public transit.
“We have a wonderful transit system here,” Greene said. “It’s free, you don’t have to pay anything to ride. Once people try it, they like it. You know after the fear factor things went away, ‘Only poor people ride the bus, only crazies ride the bus.’ It’s not true. Students and faculty ride the bus.”
Todd Beutler, the transit manager of the Logan Transit District, agrees that once people start riding buses, they’ll begin to like it. He said the proof is in the numbers. Ridership on the LTD and the CVTD has increased an average of 16 percent since August, when fuel prices began to soar, but Beutler said it did not decrease when prices went back down.
“What was exciting for us was in the month of November gas prices started falling again, but our ridership was up 19 percent,” Beutler said. “Once people start using public transit, they continue using it. The fuel prices increased it initially, but it’s been sustained. We’re excited about that.”
Matt Jemmett said however it’s done, he hopes people will pitch in.
“It’s a local problem that local people can fix,” Jemmett said. “As far as we, as the people of USU go, ultimately, let’s just get out of the damn car. As students, that’s one massive group of people that can affect it to a certain extent.”
-jenbeasley@cc.usu.edu