SALT LAKE CITY — At the end of January, a committee of environmentalist experts and concerned citizens stood before the Utah Legislature and sketched out what amounted to a clean air wish list for the future.
Among their hopes and dreams: that by the year 2050 the state will have implemented sufficient policies resulting in a 50% reduction of pollutant air emissions.
As it turned out, allotting 30 years to make it happen was grossly unambitious.
By the end of March, we were already there.
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Logan Mitchell, a professor in the department of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah, was a member of that committee. He was the resident scientist on the 37-person team of influencers organized by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the U. who were charged with producing a “Utah Roadmap” to assist lawmakers in developing a game plan to improve air quality in the future.
The advisory committee’s recommendations to reduce bad air — suggestions such as drive more electric cars, cut down on fossil fuels, telecommunicate to work where possible, and so on — were concrete, whereas the projections of what would happen if these steps were implemented were theoretical.
I mean, who knew if A would actually equal B?
It wasn’t like you could get the whole state to shut down for a few weeks and see.
And then, it did.
Mitchell, 39, who got his doctorate at Oregon State University and moved to Salt Lake City when he was hired by the U. in 2013, gets both giddy and guilty when he talks about waking up in mid-March and realizing the coronavirus lockdown meant people like him who study air quality were looking at a golden lottery ticket.
Here, at their feet, was a chance to put all their theories and conjectures to the test.
“As scientists, we get asked all the time by the policymakers, by stakeholders, by activists, ‘If we reduce this and that by whatever percent, can we see that in the atmosphere? Can we confirm that those reductions you project will really be made?’ Now, suddenly, we had this really amazing opportunity to apply the methods we’ve been developing for years and deploy them and see how well they work.
“Of course, a pandemic is an absolutely terrible way to improve air quality,” Mitchell is quick to add. “Nobody would wish for that or want that.
“But as a scientist, whatever happens, we try to study it. And this made for a grand experiment.”
When the state shut down, Mitchell got busy. Coordinating with others in the air quality community, he gathered data in March and April that compared the air now with the air in the past. He took measurements of nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon dioxide, as well as other particles, then published his findings on the Department of Atmospheric Sciences website in a report titled “Air Quality Improvements During the March-April COVID-19 Lockdown.”
You can look up Mitchell’s report at atmos.utah.edu/air-quality/covid-19_air_quality.php. It is full of impressive charts, graphs and technical jargon that explain the science. But the bottom line news flash is this:
When people stop driving gas-powered cars, the air cleans up really fast.
Mitchell’s data shows that almost overnight, nitrogen oxide went down by 57%, nitrogen dioxide went down by 36.4%t and carbon dioxide was reduced by 33% at the University of Utah tracking station.
“It was just amazing to see the change happen immediately,” he says. “It drives home how quickly our local actions directly affect our air quality. What this means is that as soon as we switch out to a higher percentage of electric vehicles, deploy electric water heaters, things like that, it’s going to be a humongous, and immediate, benefit to air quality.”
In the short term, the improved air translates not just to crystal clear views of the mountains, but to better health.
“We’re hearing reports coming out now where people are saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t have to use my inhaler for my asthma last month like I usually do,’” says Mitchell. “Health benefits like that are showing up. I hope as we grow our economy out of this pandemic we take that into account.
“This is not pie in the sky stuff. We could do this. Going forward, we could really learn from this. It was a terrible way to find out, but it definitely shows what’s attainable.”
Time will tell, but in the long term, getting sick just might help us breathe easier.