HOLY SMOKES, the PM2.5 in Salt Lake County peaked at a stratospheric 250.2ug/m3! Anything over 20 and you start to see health impacts….250 is off the charts!

Other monitoring stations reported:

Utah county: PM2.5 235 ug/m3
Ogden area PM2.5 90.8ug

And these are one hour averages, not peak values. Both the winds and the fire off I-80 were big contributors to yesterday’s pea soup air quality that tasted like gun powder and metal.

In response to this toxic air, Dr. Brian Moench, the Founder and President of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment wrote the following letter to the valley’s air activists:

I hope everyone is having an opportunity to enjoy the air quality we’re having. The PM 2.5 has been round 70 and the ozone has been high as well, giving us a double whammy. You can smell it, taste it, and it stings your eyes–even inside your house. Visibility is about one third of a mile. Extraordinary winds you say? Not really, 25 to 50 mph is all. Extremely dry desert conditions you say? Not really, we’ve had regular moisture for several weeks, the ground is still wet actually.

Now image that the Great Salt Lake Minerals Corps is granted their application to expand and the Great Salt Lake drops two feet because of it, exposing an area of dry beach about as big as greater Salt Lake City. And suppose the Bear River diversion project gets approved to supply more development like the NorthWest Quadrant and drops the GSL another couple of feet. Suppose Herbert caves again when Nevada resurrects the Snake Valley water grab and denudes an area in West Desert the size of the state of Vermont. Suppose the climate crisis actually kicks in with hotter temp., less moisture, stressing and killing desert vegetation even without the help of the Snake Valley water grab. Anyone alarmed yet about our current political leaders driving us over a climate cliff and directly into a blinding dust bowl?

The next UPHE meeting is Thursday, April 1 at 18:00 at the U. of Utah Orthopedic Hospital, 590 Wakara Way, 3rd floor conference room. Please come and help us address the public policies that are endangering us all.

For more information about the agenda please contact Cherise Udell at supermomsforcleanair.org or Brian Moench at drmoench@yahoo.com

Poor air quality hurts the performance of women marathoners, while male runners are relatively unaffected, according to research from scientists at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. “If women are running in polluted conditions, their times are going to be slower,” said Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineer at Virginia Tech. “You’re not going to PR [achieve a personal record] on a highly polluted day.” Marr and her collaborator, Matthew Ely, an exercise physiologist at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, evaluated marathon race results, weather data, and air pollutant concentrations at seven marathons during a period of eight to 28 years. They compared the top three male and female finishing times with course records and air pollution levels retrieved from the Environmental Protection Agency’s data base, and adjusted for high temperatures, which also have a negative impact on performance. They found that even though pollution levels rarely exceeded national health standards for air quality during these marathons, women’s performances still suffered.

“If women are running in polluted conditions, their times are going to be slower,” said Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineer at Virginia Tech.

For the full article please go to US News.

Apart from several health concerns reported for air pollution, a new study finds pollutants as major factors affecting the success rate in in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

Certain studies have linked prenatal exposure to air pollution to not only preterm labor and low birth weight but also lower IQ scores in the newborn.

According to the study published in Human Reproduction, exposure to air pollution lowers the chance of having a baby in women trying to conceive through IVF.

According to the study published in Human Reproduction, exposure to air pollution lowers the chance of having a baby in women trying to conceive through IVF

Air pollution causes widespread inflammation in the body, increasing the production of cell-damaging oxygen-free radicals and placing the individual at an increased risk of developing blood clots, both of which are considered as known threats for pregnancy.

Higher than average levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a common pollutant produced by vehicle exhaust, lowers the success of conceiving through IVF, the study found.

Exposure to high levels of another pollutant, known as ozone, after embryo implantation in the womb lowered the success of having a baby. High ozone exposure around the time of ovulation, however, improved the chance of conceiving.

Scientists, therefore, concluded that NO2 levels affect the success of having a baby in expectant moms, stressing that the influence of these pollutants in real life is “subtle”.

Press T.V.

Most of us know that the Wasatch Front, and in particular the Salt Lake Valley, has the unfortunate distinction of having some of the worst air in the country. We also know that the brown soup that hides our beautiful mountains and degrades our quality of life is not just ugly to look at — it causes diseases like asthma, birth defects, cancer, learning disabilities, and more. It is in our bodies. It is killing us, and it is killing our children.

Kennecott Utah Copper knows about this crisis as well. But what you might not know, is that every year, from April 1st until November 1st, they make the conscious decision to burn dirty coal for electricity at their plant in Magna. The power plant doesn’t even need to burn coal–it can run on natural gas, which is far cleaner–but coal is cheaper. That means that there has been a conscious cost/benefit analysis and the company has measured the health and lives of all of us as less valuable than the money they save by burning coal.

Our request is that Kennecott immediately stop burning coal and commit to switching to renewable energy by 2015.

According to Kennecott’s own report, the plant emits more than 1 million tons of CO2 per year. They acknowledge that climate change is a serious threat, and yet they continue to put their cost savings above a livable future for our children. We need to tell Kennecott Utah Copper: No More Coal in Our Valley.

Join us on April 3rd for a peaceful, legal demonstration on the public land outside the gates of the power plant. Tell Kennecott to be good neighbors and stop agitating our air quality and the climate crisis. There will even be some silly improvisational theater. It will be fun!

WHERE: Meeting to carpool at Central Pointe Trax Station parking lot, 2100 South 200 West, Salt Lake City [map] Then on to the power plant just West of Magna

WHEN: 11:00 AM — leaving by 11:30. The demonstration will last from 12:00 to 1:00.

BRING: Friends, family, signs, and blue clothes to represent the color that the sky should be on a sunny day!

**Fossil Fools Day is a national day of action targeting the fossil fuel industry. This Utah-based event is legal, peaceful, and good-spirited action — the first of a series of actions planned to convince Kennecott to transition to clean energy and stop polluting our beautiful valley.**

By Judy Fahys
The Salt Lake Tribune
Updated: 02/10/2010 10:07:32 AM MST

Most Salt Lake County kids attend school in areas that aren’t terribly close to major roadways. But the 7 percent who do are more exposed to the pollutants linked to asthma, heart problems and a host of other maladies associated with dirty air, says a new study from the University of Utah.

“There’s an adverse outcome for kids who go to these schools and play in these schoolyards” close to busy roads, said William M. McDonnell of the University of Utah. McDonnell, a professor in the U.’s schools of law and medicine, shared the results of the study Tuesday. Along with co-authors Phoebe B. McNeally of the geography department and Sean D. Firth of the pediatrics department, he previewed a presentation they will give in April at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s first-ever symposium on environmental justice.

The trio emphasized that their findings really raise more questions than they answer. “We haven’t assigned any particular risk to any particular school,” he noted, explaining that the potential health impacts can be inferred from a growing body of air-pollution studies. What they did learn came from an analysis of the proximity of schools to different types of roads. The researchers mapped the schools, drew a 500-foot circle around each and classified them according to the busiest nearby road.
Roads with the highest speed limits — those with greater than 50 mph and presumably the highest traffic — were close to 7 percent of the county’s 349 schools.

Roads with 31-50 mph speed limits and moderate traffic represented nearly 12 percent of the schools, and 81 percent of the schools were surrounded by roads with 30 mph speed limits or less. “The vast majority of these [schools] are in residential areas, which is good,” McDonnell said, noting that children spend about 30 percent of their time at school or in schoolyards. “But there are certainly some inequities.”

The group also considered socioeconomic factors, based on census data. They found that the schools in the areas of greatest poverty and least education were the ones that were most likely to be in the high-traffic areas. And schools nearest the least busy roads are located in neighborhoods with the highest percentage of high-school graduates and the lowest percentage of households in poverty.

The researchers said they hope to expand on this initial work, possibly studying schools throughout Utah or looking at areas of more concentrated pollution. Perhaps further study will help answer a key question: Would it be worthwhile for Utah to adopt a law like California’s that limits the construction of new schools close to major roadways?

Audience members had lots of ideas of their own about what to do next, such as filtering the air at schools in high-traffic areas or using sound walls to block some pollution from schoolyards. “Clearly,” said Kent Udell, an engineering professor and husband of Utah Moms for Clean Air founder Cherise Udell, “what we need to do is cut down the pollution coming from vehicles.” Incentives for clean-fuel vehicles would be one way to clean up the air near schools, he noted.

I just received this email from Tim Wagner with Resource Media describing another amazing victory for all lovers of clean air in Utah:

I want to send along this bit of great news if you’ve not heard. The Toquop coal plant proposed near Mesquite, NV officially went down yesterday, which was the last of the three coal plants proposed upwind of Utah to meet a timely death. I was fortunate enough to be on the conference call with Senator Reid, the President of Blackstone and the Mayor of Mesquite when this announcement was made and it was quite a moment, albeit brief, capping many years and a lot of work from a lot of people in both Nevada and Utah. This is really momentous considering that it was only a year ago when we were still faced with the prospect of all three plants and over 4,800 MWs of dirty coal spewing toxins into Utah’s airshed. It’s true that there are still major issues with natural gas but we can all breathe a bit easier knowing that we can and have made a huge difference. If you’ve taken time over the years to sign a postcard, write a letter, make a phone call, ride a bus to Nevada in order to make your voice heard, pat yourselves on the back for a job well done.

Tim

**Utah Moms for Clean Air added a powerful voice to the call for “NO NEW COAL-FIRED POWER PLANTS.” Congratulations for using all that mom power to make a difference!

Cleaning up our air has a cost, but so does NOT cleaning up our air. See the below California study which calculates some real $$ costs associated with dirty air. It is not pretty: www.rand.org