I recently moved back to St. George after having lived outside of town for years. My grandfather asked me how I was liking it. I told him I liked the convenience, but that I missed the ease of trail running outside my door and I missed the clean air. I complained about breathing exhaust on my runs in town. My grandfather shook his head, snorted with a smirk and said, “Spoken like an environmentalist.”
My grandfather gleans no small amount of amusement at my expense and never misses an opportunity to tell me how environmentalists are screwing things up. But from my paradigm, it’s not the environment I care so much about, its people; my people to be exact.
While in grad school I was in a class dealing with air pollution. One of our case studies was on air pollution in northern Utah. I was stoked to get to study something in an area I was familiar with. We were directed to a YouTube video of a BYU professor by the name of C. Arden Pope. He had done air quality studies on Utah Valley – where I had grown up, and was addressing a room full of people at Utah Valley University on the findings of his studies. I sat in rapt attention for 60 minutes listening to him; I think my jaw permanently rested on the ground during the whole thing.
There is just something about listening to a respected and qualified expert who shares information that is both factual and frightening that gets your attention, but strangely, it was a bunch of “fanatical” mothers who got the ball rolling.
In the 1980s Geneva Steel was shut down for 13 months during a strike. During that time mothers of small children noticed that their children got better – as in healthier. While correlation does not always mean causation, to these mothers, the only logical explanation was the closing of the mill. So they started pressing the issue. Most officials and experts blew them off as “fanatics.” But because scientists can’t ethically test the effects of air pollution on human beings, Utah Valley and the opening and closing of Geneva Steel offered a perfect natural test chamber to do just that.
C. Arden Pope, along with experts from other universities and institutions started looking at health records during the periods when Geneva Steel was open and took readings from the air quality monitors and began their studies, which can be found here, here, and here.
In a nutshell, what they found was that increased exposure to fine particulate air pollution in the valley was tied to increased hospitalization, increased respiratory symptoms, decreased lung function, increased school absences – respiratory and cardiovascular disease and death. They found that breathing air pollution has virtually the same health effects as smoking.
What most surprised them were the effects on the cardiovascular system. Air pollution disrupts how the heart works. Pope said that eating a high fat diet and air pollution both affect pulmonary health. At the end of the studies they found that air pollution affects all the major areas of the body: the lungs, the heart, and the brain.
The insidious part of the whole thing, however, is that while people choose unhealthy lifestyles like smoking, exposure to air pollution is ubiquitous and involuntary; 100 percent of us breathe and according to Pope, if you live somewhere with a lot of pollution, breathing increases your risk of dying.
We are all going to die someday. There is no escaping that. The question to is, how do you want to die? Do you want to die with lung cancer or from a killer fog episode? I don’t.
I have considered moving to Salt Lake City. I love it there! But what always creeps into my decision-making is the air pollution and infamous winter inversion.
I can’t help thinking that if our politicians get their way and take public land and increase the fossil fuel development here; more and more people like me will choose to live elsewhere. It’s quite simple really. I love my children and don’t want them to be sick all the time and I want to live to see them grow up. If living in a city decreases my chances of that, I will probably look somewhere else.
People live in southern Utah for that very reason. It’s beautiful, it’s open, and it’s clean. It makes sense to consider the effects of air pollution here before there is a problem. The “Clean Air, No Excuses” rallies in SLC and St. George were pushed by forward thinking people who have an eye on the future.
C. Arden Pope said that according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the largest benefits of all federal regulations come from controlling PM2.5, or air pollution. The benefits amount to $20 – $167 billion annually with a cost of around $7 billion. Clearly the benefits outweigh the costs, and those benefits come through better health and productivity.
This is huge. It’s huge because many of us are lured by arguments in favor of industry and a growing economy and against federal regulations but are never told about the hidden costs for the first or the benefits of the second – largely accrued through healthcare costs and lost work days. If politicians had to show the costs of an industry alongside the benefits we might be a little more skeptical in our support.
What I find most intriguing about Utah Moms for Clean Air is their argument against federal regulation. They argue that Utah needs stricter regulations than the feds require and that allowing the state to regulate air pollution is the way do it.
Cherise Udall, founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air, said in an article in The Independent, “A few years back, our legislators passed a law which said we can’t pass any regulations stricter than EPA regulations. We need Utah solutions for Utah problems. We need state laws stronger than federal regulations.”
In other words, Udall and others think that the federal regulations that are the most beneficial for the country are not beneficial enough for Utah. SB 87, the bill that Utah Moms for Clear Air are trying to get passed in the legislature is one designed to de-couple what Utah can do from what the federal government requires. Udall said that because Utahns dislike federal regulations, this bill will put regulation into the hands of the state wherein it can impose stiffer air quality regulations that help the recreation based economy and the health of residents.
While I am skeptical of giving the state the power to regulate itself (and apparently they are too since this bill didn’t make it to the senate floor last year), I appreciate the idea of making local politicians accountable for deadly air. Instead of allowing Utah politicians to use the EPA as a scapegoat we can say, “The buck stops here. Your ban on fireplaces isn’t enough. Try again.”
If this bill gets passed we can demand that our politicians build a future with a robust economy based on real progress – not the progress of the 19th century. The very definition of the word ‘progress’ implies ‘better;’ doing it the way we have been since the industrial revolution is not better. We need to use our imaginations, ingenuity and industrious character to come up with a better and healthier way. Utah has a rich history and tradition of doing just that – we should stick to it.
Greta Hyland has a Masters degree in Environmental Policy & Management and has worked for the BLM and the NPS as well as for non-profit organizations. She is a regular contributor to the Utah Adventure Journal and is the Copy Editor at the Independent. She writes regularly on her blog about environmental policy issues affecting the southwest, as well as personal narratives about outdoor recreation and simple living. Her blog can be found at www.thesouthwestjournal.wordpress.com A Utah native, Greta is a consummate desert rat and loves exploring the southwest. She can be reached at [email protected]
