Cold weather was the
biggest adjustment Vicki Evans
expected when she and her
husband moved to the Salt Lake
Valley a few years ago. But it
turned out that the
breath-grabbing, throat-stinging
pollution ended up being far
tougher.
"I told my husband," she
recalls, after their first bout
with wintertime pollution, "
'You have got to get me out of
here.' "
Evans found herself on
Sunday drawn to a discussion at
the Salt Lake City Main Library,
"Utah's Air Pollution: Should
You Give Up and Move Out of
State?"
In short, said the talk's
presenter, Brian Moench of Utah
Physicians for a Healthy
Environment, the answer for some
might sadly be "yes."
Breathing Utah's pollution
has the same health impact as
smoking five cigarettes a day.
It causes about 2,000 premature
deaths on the Wasatch Front each
year, he told the three dozen
people assembled for the talk,
one of the twice-monthly
programs featured by the
nonpartisan, nonprofit Forum for
Questioning Minds.
The Salt Lake City
anesthesiologist began his
presentation with vintage-1940s
photos of a Salt Lake Valley
hidden under a black cloud of
pollution from coal furnaces
that many used to heat their
homes. And, although government
measures show that sort of
winter pollution and summertime
ozone have declined in the past
three decades of environmental
controls, more than 2,000
studies in the past decade
reveal that the impacts of
pollution are much worse than
were previously understood, he
noted.
He showed a photo of a boy
trying to light up a cigarette
to remind the group that all
Utahns who breathe the polluted
air are, in effect, being forced
to smoke.
Ordinary Utahns can help
clean up the air by
acknowledging the problem,
changing their own lifestyles
and promoting a healthy
environment, Moench said. He
underscored that they need to
"change our political leaders"
by letting them know what a high
priority it is to deal with air
pollution.
"That's the most important
part of this whole picture," he
said, adding the issue cuts
across political and economic
boundaries.
The added health care costs
are a drain on the economy,
Moench said.
The state quickly mobilized
this summer when nine people
were killed in Emery County's
Crandall Canyon.
With thousands of lives at
stake on the Wasatch Front, air
pollution ought to trigger an
equally decisive reaction.
"What," he wondered aloud,
"is the morality of knowing
thousands of people will die
because you won't clean up the
air?"
Moench's air-pollution
tutorial comes just as Gov. Jon
Huntsman Jr. prepares to
announce his budget priorities
for the coming year, a plan that
is rumored to include stepped-up
attention to cleaning up Utah's
air.
It also comes the month
before Utah's 75 lawmakers
gather to make new laws, set new
policies and decide how to spend
billions of dollars in
government funds.
Two months ago, a
legislative committee panned a
task force recommendation for
raising an additional $3 million
a year to step up air
monitoring. And, in the 2007
Legislature, lawmakers kept
spending on environmental
programs flat while infusing
most other state programs with
some of the $1.6 billion budget
surplus.
Moench organized the
doctors' anti-pollution group
partly in reaction to the
Legislature and partly in
reaction to the growing number
of studies linking air pollution
to dangerous health effects.
Since then, a new clean-air
coalition of 19 groups,
representing thousands of Utahns,
has formed and promises to keep
the issue on the political
agenda.
He said it is "a profoundly
sad thing to say" that some
Utahns may find the cost of
living with the pollution too
high. Some of them probably
ought to relocate because of the
hazards ozone and fine particles
present to the health of their
families and themselves, he told
Salt Lake City resident Ruth
Carol.
Evans and her husband have
tentatively decided to stick
around the Salt Lake Valley
after they retire despite the
pollution.
"Now," she said, "I feel
like I'm going to stay around
and try to do something about
it."
fahys@sltrib.com