Bad air making us sick

Folks along the Wasatch Front with respiratory or heart problems should limit the time they spend and activities they do outdoors until the bad air clears out.

And weather watchers say that's not likely to happen before midweek — if then.

Cache County air quality on Friday was listed as "unhealthy for sensitive people." For everyone in Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties, it's flat unhealthy.

"It's pretty bad out there," said Donna Kemp-Spangler, spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Quality, who added that experts have told her they don't remember a longer stretch of unhealthy air.

Salt Lake City has had 22 days of smoggy or hazy conditions in January, according to KSL meteorologist Kevin Eubank. And the forecast for the coming week offers little hope for a break from the inversion affecting the Wasatch Front valleys, over which a high pressure has clamped a warm lid that's holding down a layer of cold, stagnant air.

With January winding to a close, it now seems likely the month will end up with only five days of clear skies, Eubank said.

As the inversion drags on, area hospitals are reporting increases in the number of patients they're seeing for respiratory and heart problems.

Dr. Linke Hebrew, an emergency-room physician at Pioneer Valley Hospital, says that whenever it's cold and the air's extremely dirty, as it is now, they treat more people who have lung disease or asthma. That's true throughout the affected areas.

"If you have respiratory problems, this haze is making it worse," says Christopher Nelson, spokesman for University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics. "It happens whenever the air in the valley gets this bad."

The respiratory-care department at St. Mark's Hospital has seen an increase in patients coming in with respiratory problems, says Pam Fogle, hospital spokeswoman, but they're also seeing patients inside the hospital whose pulmonary and heart problems are being worsened by the weather and bad air.

That's no surprise to C. Arden Pope , a leading expert on small particulate matter, which is the primary concern during an inversion. His research has shown increased respiratory symptoms, decreased lung function and rises in hospitalizations for both respiratory and cardiovascular disease, including an increased risk of death.

A recent study conducted with LDS Hospital found that greater exposure to fine particulates increases the risk of unstable angina and of heart attacks. On the breathing side, the pollution led to increased symptoms, reduced lung function, rises in absenteeism at work and school. Put bluntly, he says, more people are hospitalized and more people die.

Pope, a professor of economics at Brigham Young University, takes the effects of air quality seriously.