An American Lung Association report painting the Salt Lake metro area as the fifth worst in the country in terms of a particular kind of air pollution is misleading, says the director of the Utah Division of Air Quality.
However, Rick Sprott quickly adds, the state does have problems with air pollution and he doesn't want people to think the division is being defensive about it.
"There are definitely lots of people in Utah whose health is impacted by the current level of pollution," he said. He supports the association alerting people about that.
The lung association's "State of the Air: 2006" report gives Utah failing marks concerning the finest particle pollutants, for short periods of high pollution levels.
These finest particles are called PM-2.5, meaning they are particles 2.5 microns across or smaller. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, a particle of 2.5 microns is about 30 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair. Pollution that tiny can lodge in the lungs and damage health.
The report said that for PM-2.5, "short-term particle pollution remains a huge air pollution threat in Utah's largest cities."
It ranked the Salt Lake City-Ogden-Clearfield stretch as the country's fifth most polluted, based on short-term levels of this pollution. Logan was rated as sixth worst in the country, while Provo-Orem was said to move up to ninth most polluted, from an earlier ranking in 15th place nationally.
"We currently are meeting all the PM-2.5 standards across the state," Sprott said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "We certainly have a number of days where we exceed the standard, but the health standard itself is based on a three-year average."
That is, the EPA's health standard concerning this pollution does not use the same criteria as measured by the American Lung Association.
In December 2004, the EPA designated all or parts of 209 counties across the country as nonattainment areas in PM-2.5 pollution. These are places that fail to meet federal health standards.
These 209 places — from the District of Columbia to Fairfield, Conn., and from Baltimore to Los Angeles — did not meet EPA health criteria in fine pollution, either because of violating the 24-hour or an annual standard. But no Utah area was designated as a nonattainment region for PM-2.5.
To claim that the Wasatch Front is the fifth worst in the country for PM-2.5 pollution — when it is in attainment and 209 places are not — is misleading, Sprott said.
He says the American Lung Association annual report card system is a good idea.
But, he added, the report card's implementation is "uniformly despised" by air quality directors across the country "because of its unscientific criteria it uses."
The association counted days when PM-2.5 pollution reached a certain level. The EPA's scientific method is more nuanced, throwing out the six days per year with the highest peak pollution, and averaging the rest over three years.
Why average over three years? Because that shows if there's an actual problem or only a fluke event.
Sprott doesn't want to pull any punches about Utah's air pollution problems.
"We are close to violating the standard in Cache Valley," he said. "We have some pretty high values during the year along the Wasatch Front right now, but we are a ways from violating."
Scientists have suspected for years that the current standard is not stringent enough, he said.
The EPA is proposing new PM-2.5 rules. Most likely, the proposal will be changed before it is finalized in September, he said.
As written, the proposal would drop the 24-hour standard to 35 micrograms per cubic meter, instead of the present 65 micrograms. If that happens, he said, "they would have numerous counties from the Idaho border all the way down into Juab County" that would violate the standard.
But Utah wouldn't be alone.
If the new rules are put into place, Sprott said, the whole country "lights up like a Christmas tree" in nonattainment designations.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com