School takes steps to clean up air

Lori Prichard reporting If someone at your house has been complaining of a dry cough or sore throat, they've got company.

Some of those symptoms can be blamed on something as simple as the air we breathe. We spoke with one family doctor who called it a toxic soup of air.

It's no secret Utah's air quality is not what it should be. In fact, the American Lung Association ranked three of Utah's cities -- Logan, Salt Lake and Provo -- in the top 20 on its most polluted cities list for 2007.

And that starts with a thick haze of dust, soot, exhaust and who-knows-what hanging over our heads.

"I can really feel it and sometimes I get wheezy and a little breathing weird," she said.

Today her school announced it's going to do something about it, at least what it can do.

Allan Sparrow of Rowland Hall St. Mark's School said, "We've been working on this for a couple of years, but the basic premise is we've asked parents not to idle while they're waiting to pick up their kids."

In the parking lot we found most parents complied, though not everyone did.

"Idling produces pollution in the air," Sparrow explained. "It's particularly bad a schools when you have cars lined up ready to pick up their kids. There are kids standing right by the cars, the worst air around."

Family physician, Dr. Seth Wallace of Copperview Medical Center, says it's not a bad idea. "It's worth anything any of us can do to decrease the amount of pollution, whether by carpooling or using public transportation and not idling when possible," he said.

By the way, it's worth noting the dry air isn't helping our breathing. This cold weather mixed with the dry air makes us not feel thirsty. So make sure you drink lots of fluids to avoid dehydration.

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