Congratulations Utah on having the worst air quality in the nation!

By Kimberly Thomas
News Editor

During the month of December Utah received an all to familiar title, “The Worst Air Quality in the Nation.” Four Utah cities in particular proved invaluable in helping receive that title: Logan, Salt Lake, Ogden, and Provo.
During summer and winter months Utah residents experience the choking gloom of poor air quality, but we have a scientific name for it: the inversion. Every so often residents (particularly the elderly and asthmatics) cringe as they hear these words and wait for a storm or change in air patterns to clear away the gloom.
But why do we have inversion? Does Utah use more pollutants than others? No, believe it or not the inversion that brings poor air quality is a product of our bowl-like geography. Inversion refers to hot air trapping cold air, and vice versa. This is why inversion is commonly experienced in winter, the warmer air of the valley is trapped by colder air of the mountains.
Air quality is measured by the presence of five serious air pollutants: ground-level ozone, particle pollution, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. The problem is that bowl like feature of Salt Lake and Cache Counties combined with cold air trap these pollutants in the valley making air quality hazardous.
Air quality is measured by the Air Quality Index, or AQI. The AQI is a scale of 0 to 500 which is broken up into hazardous levels. It is at only 100 that members of sensitive groups will experience discomfort and only 50 points later pollutant levels become hazardous to the general population.
So what can the general population do to help? On dangerous air days it is important to keep your amount of driving down and limit or eliminate coal burning. For more information on what you can do go to Utah’s air quality website: cleanair.utah.gov. My personal recommendation? Go skiing.