Tiny engine chip would monitor car's emissions

FARMINGTON — The Davis County Board of Health has decided to begin exploring ways to catch polluting vehicles sooner than their once-a-year mandated emissions checkup.

Davis County is one of at least five counties in Utah whose air becomes too polluted at times with tiny particulate matter commonly emitted from vehicles.

The Davis health board voted to look into a pilot program that would place transmitters in vehicles with an onboard diagnostics program, which is a chip in the vehicle's engine that constantly measures its emissions data.

The transmitter could broadcast that data to special receivers in Davis County. If the data reach a certain polluting level, the receiver could notify the health department, which could then inform the driver of the polluting vehicle.

Assuming Davis County commissioners approve the health department's budget request on Dec. 3, there is money set aside to begin the pilot program on a small scale, said Davis County Health Department director Lewis Garrett.

"The transmitters are surprisingly inexpensive," he said. "For $50 you'd never have to bring a vehicle in for testing."

When a new air quality standard from the EPA comes out in December, the Wasatch Front counties and parts of Cache County are expected to land in a non-attainment status, said Bryce Bird, planning branch manager, Division of Air Quality.

The EPA also thinks parts of Box Elder and Tooele counties should be designated as non-attainment, too, though the Utah Division of Air Quality begs to differ on that and has contested those designations.

But the Cache, Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Utah counties are all but guaranteed to make the list, meaning that the state will need to come up with a plan for getting those five counties to reach the new designation for particulate matter 2.5 microns in size, or PM 2.5, which has been known to cause asthma flare-ups and respiratory distress in the youngest and oldest parts of the population.

The new standard for PM 2.5 is 35 micrograms per cubic meter, a reduction from the old standard of 65 micrograms per cubic meter, Bird said. Utah will have three years to come up with a plan for reaching the new standard.

Part of the plan for dealing with the particulate matter may involve making traffic move as efficiently as possible, Bird said.