Font Resize- Utah wildfires
- Sep 3:
- Crews gain on Utah wildfires
- Sep 1:
- Firefighters will get help from weather
- Fire crews counterattack flames as weather, wind conditions improve
- Aug 31:
- Residents allowed back into homes
- Utah wildfires: The lucky ones survey what's left
- Wind cuts firefighters a break in Scofield blaze that threatened cabins
- Forest Service, environmentalist defend handling fire
- Herbert views fire, criticizes federal policies
- Aug 30:
- Mill Flat Fire roaring out of control
Southern Utah and California wildfires are to blame for the haze that's obscuring the Wasatch Front skies.
Tons of pollution have drifted over the West on southerly air currents, but the influx of smoke hasn't made pollution rise to levels deemed unhealthy by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency -- at least for now. The Utah Division of Air Quality Web page forecasts "green" or good air quality for Tuesday.
"It may seem like a lot worse than it is," said Bo Call, who leads Utah's air monitoring effort. He sees no improvement on the horizon until a good wind or rain blows in.
"We're pretty much stuck with [the hazy skies] until then."
Even in Boulder, Colo., the blazes in California and southern Utah are having an impact, said researcher Christine Wiedinmyer, who studies the influence between wildfire and pollution.
A study she co-authored last year showed that smoke from the 2007 wildfires in California made ozone pollution spike to unhealthy levels, even in rural California and Nevada where there were no smoke plumes.
"The fires can exacerbate some of the air pollution problems that are going on already," she said.
Ozone pollution is usually a problem during summer in Utah. The colorless, odorless gas is produced at the ground level when the chemical byproducts of combustion -- whether from car engines, industry or wildfire -- react with sunlight and heat to produce the health-damaging pollutant.
While the ozone spikes might not exceed EPA standards, they still can affect people who are sensitive, especially the very young, the very old and anyone with heart or lung problems.
The Utah Asthma program (http://health.utah.gov/asthma/) has updated its Web page with guidelines for tracking the pollution in your area and protecting yourself from ozone pollution if you are sensitive to it or if you exercise outdoors.
Wiedinmyer noted that it's nothing new for wildfire smoke to be transported in the air, but the tools scientists now have make it easier to understand those impacts.
Fires pump lots of pollutants into the skies. For instance, a study of the fires that burned 908 square miles in Southern California in late October 2003 found that more than 5.5 million tons of pollutants were released over the few days of the study. The emissions included more than 50,000 tons of fine-particle pollution.
