The Feds say our air quality is ok, but it can still impact your health
Residents who live through northern Utah’s winter inversions may be surprised to hear that the federal government has found us in attainment with the Clean Air Act for winter particulate pollution levels.
Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, another local air quality watchdog, called EPA’s air quality standards “arbitrary” and a mix of politics, industry concessions and science.
– Dr. Brian Moench to the Salt Lake Tribune
“There’s no safe level of air pollution exposure,” said Brian Moench, president of UPHE, in an interview, “in the same way there’s no safe number of cigarettes you can smoke.”
Fine particulate pollution like PM 2.5 can move through lung tissue, make its way into the bloodstream and impact the brain, he noted.
We encourage residents to trust how you are feeling as far as air pollution is concerned. We know the air quality index and government monitors are severely limited in how well they measure the toxicity of air pollution. Sometimes we can see and feel poor air quality even when it isn’t reported as harmful. When you feel the health impacts of it, wear a mask, use your HEPA air purifier, avoid outdoor exercise, and try not to create more indoor pollution.
No one should think this change in Wasatch Front attainment status for the 24 hr PM2.5 standard by the EPA means that our air pollution is no longer hurting people. Even removing any skepticism about possible politically driven decision making by the Trump EPA, the medical literature is very clear—there is no safe level of air pollution exposure, period. All air pollution is harmful, even at very low concentrations. In fact, the relationship between air pollution and poor health outcomes is not a straight line, it’s a curved, or hyperbolic line. Here’s an example:
I talked to Fox13 about this news in the context of our first winter inversion pollution event of the year over the weekend, “Research shows smoking one cigarette a day is virtually half as much risk as smoking an entire pack,” Moench said. “In other words, the first few additions of air pollution to the community airshed are having the greatest impact. So everyone should look at the whole situation here with air pollution on the Wasatch Front, as we should always strive for as clean air as we can get.”
While there has been some improvement in overall air quality in the winter, we know so much more about how harmful air pollution is than we did even ten years ago.
Not only is there no safe level, but at low concentrations, increases in air pollution have a greater impact than the same increases when the baseline pollution is much higher.
So as a community we should keep striving to reduce our air pollution as much as possible. If this change in status is then used to justify permitting more pollution sources, which is exactly what we worry about, then, ironically, it will backfire in protecting the public.