Salt Lake City hopes to solve inversion riddle, fix air quality
SALT LAKE CITY — Researchers are conducting a $2 million study to help people better understand what leads to northern Utah’s winter inversions, which create a brown, murky haze of air pollution that engulfs the Salt Lake City metro area.
They are using aircraft and advanced instruments to determine what conditions lead to the formation of fine particulate pollution.
“There is a very complex interaction between the meteorology and the atmospheric chemistry that we feel deserves a very detailed look,” said Steven Brown of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This is a detailed study to try to un- derstand how best to apply the data to help people who are in charge of negating these problems to address them well.”
Researchers have gathered pollution data at multiple sites from Cache County to Utah County, using an airplane to probe the different layers of the inversion.
“One of the key things we are able to do with the airplane is to really say something about the composition of the air at various stages above ground,” Brown said.
A synopsis of the study proposal notes the prevalence of winter pollution in mountain valleys across the western United States. But it stresses that Salt Lake City is by far the largest urban area affected and suffers the highest concentrations.
The health impacts are severe as well, the document states, with emergency room visits for asthma increasing 42 percent near the end of an inversion.
The study comes as Utah remains out of compliance with federal standards for particulate pollution.
The Utah Department of Environmental Quality is looking to take the research and its conclusions to come up with solutions for the pollution.
The researchers studying the state’s pollution are from the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah State University, the University of Toronto and multiple other entities, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.