"We hear a lot of people who haven't been here long say it's getting worse," says Rick Stott, director of the DEQ. "That's not scientifically accurate by a long stretch."

But it's bad and Stott says so. On Monday, walking around downtown Salt Lake City was about the equivalent of sitting in a living room while someone smoked a cigarette. Some people are wearing masks in public. The problem is that Utah's particulate matter is too small to be filtered by masks. But, as Olson says, "It won't hurt. If you see a different color (on the white mask), then it must be doing something."

Utah is pretty much the perfect place for dirty inversions. Normally, these pollutants would rise into the atmosphere, but cold temperatures, combined with the bowl-shaped valleys and snow, prevent them from escaping. Along comes a stationary high pressure system and a vicious cycle ensues. A layer of snow on the valley floor and the thick gunk in the air prevent the ground from warming, so the cold air (and pollutants) are trapped.

Taken together, it's a perfect recipe for a thick, chunky soup. M'm, M'm, not so good.

What can you do? Reduce your driving, which accounts for about half the pollutants. Stott likens the situation to compounding interest — "Each day of the inversion traps pollution from the previous day. What you did last week is still there in the air."

So if you eliminate one or two days of driving, or if you walk to lunch instead of drive, or combine all your errands into one trip, that's less pollution collecting in the air — and in your lungs.

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Doug Robinson's column runs on Tuesdays. Please e-mail drob@desnews.com.