The commissioning of a science-based “road map” for addressing air pollution policy in Utah will at least help clear the air of myths and misconceptions about the nature of the problem and offer most workable immediate and long-term solutions.
The Legislature last year ordered a science-based study by the University of Utah’s Kem Gardner Policy Institute to develop practical clean-air policy recommendations. The study should encourage a fact-based discussion not polluted by attitudes influenced by various political dispositions.
Too often, clean-air advocates conflate the problem of short-term particulate pollution associated with winter inversions with overall air quality, which by relative measurement, does not justify the hyperbole about Utah having “the dirtiest air in America.”
Similarly, science-based policy recommendations should help scrub the atmosphere on Capitol Hill of exaggerated fears that aggressive anti-pollution efforts will “kill economic development.”
Unhealthy air is a serious problem that has a direct impact on public health, though it should be pointed out that in the past decade, deaths attributed to bad air have decreased by more than half, according to a study recently published in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society. The research also offers valuable context on Utah’s particular status. In overall measurements of particulate pollution, the Salt Lake City metropolitan area ranks 23rd among large cities in air quality — not good, but better than places like Dallas, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix and Eugene, Oregon.
The real facts about relative levels of pollution deserve to be front and center in the discussion about what needs to be done. They show that progress is being made and that Utah’s general levels of air pollution shouldn’t deter a tourist from a ski trip to Salt Lake City any more than from a visit to the Golden Gate Bridge. At the same time, they show a real need to enact measures to ensure continued improvement that will, indeed, have financial impacts on commercial interests tied to the production and use of non-renewable energy.
Since the varying periods of winter inversion bring the most serious health impacts, we would expect this study to focus attention on ways to mitigate the causes and effects of toxic levels of air periodically trapped in cold valley air. What such initiatives might include is not a mystery. For one, better access to mass transit — during inversion periods or even on a permanent basis — is a compelling idea bandied about in the recent Salt Lake City municipal primary election. More stringent rules about wood-burning and use of gasoline-powered snowblowers during inversions would also have measurable benefits, which a science-based study should assess and quantify.
Utahns have consistently identified clean air as a top priority for policy-makers on all levels of government. A solutions-based strategy will more likely materialize when the discussion is routed toward a fact-based, methodical cost-benefit calculation of potential measures along with a practical game plan for putting them in place.