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SALT LAKE CITY -- It's another red air alert day in most of Northern Utah, but meteorologists are hopeful that canyon winds will blow hard enough Thursday to start clearing the air.
Clean air advocates have New Year's resolutions they would like us to consider. They say small actions can make a difference in our air quality.
Utah Moms for Clean Air want us to think about the choices we make that reduce our emissions.
Cherise and Ella Udell are off to pick up Ella's older sister at school. Cherise is the founder of Utah Moms for Clean Air and turned over a new leaf this week. She'll take the six minute walk every day to pick up her daughter.
Cherise Udell says, "Come up with a resolution along with worrying about how much you weigh on the scale and how much money you're spending, but let's also worry about what kind of air quality we have in Utah and how you can impact that."
She also plans to help her husband shovel snow, instead of firing up the gasoline-powered snowblower with a two-stroke motor.
Another idea is to turn off your car when you are idling. Udell says, "The golden rule is after 10 second, turn off your car. You're actually creating more pollution and wasting more gas."
According to the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, one hour of idling burns about 1 gallon of gasoline and gets zero miles per gallon.
Udell says it also leads to toxic pea soup.
At the state Air Monitoring Center, filters show just how polluted the air gets on these inversion days.
Bo Call, manager of Air Monitoring Center, says, "It's getting worse, but we're optimistic that the storm that's coming in will clean us out a little bit, and we won't get as bad as we got last week."
So, bring on the storms and keep them coming through the winter. We'll all breathe easier.
"If our storms came on a more regular basis, every four or five days, we probably wouldn't have as many issues," Call says. "It takes a few days to build up the pollution. It's when they get stretched out, or they don't come in strong enough to clean us out that we start having problems."
Moms for Clean Air teamed up with Salt Lake City and County agencies for the Clean Air Challenge. It was a big success last summer. If you would like to take that challenge, [CLICK HERE].
E-mail: jboal@ksl.com
