The hazy inversions that have been seen above Utah Valley lately are not just unsightly, but are also a health hazard, a BYU professor said yesterday.

C. Arden Pope III, the Mary Lou Fulton professor of economics, spoke at Tuesday's Forum about air pollution and the effects of fine particulate matter on health.

"We live in and breathe our air pollution," Pope said.

Though he is now one of the world's leading experts on the health effects of air pollution, Pope first became interested in the subject when studying its economic impact in the late 1980s.

Utah Valley was the perfect place to study, with a predominantly non-smoking population, a steel factory and a valley that traps suspended particulate matter. Often the inversion was so thick that the valley floor could not be seen from the mountains.

Pope found that the inversion had a correlation to hospital admissions, respiratory symptoms, reduced lung function, increased school absences and increased respiratory and cardiovascular problems.

He showed a picture of Danora, Pa., in 1948, which looked like a typical night scene with street lamps lighting the way. The picture was taken at noon.

A similar picture showed an inversion in London in December 1952. During the days of the inversion, the death rate jumped from approximately 260 per day to 800-900 per day, and didn't return to average for several days.

In a joint study on the health effects of pollutants, which took into account whether or not people smoke, Pope found that smokers were eight times more likely to die from lung cancer than non-smokers.

"What does this say about smoking? It's still dumb," Pope said.

But he said what was shocking to him about the study was the mortality rate of those who lived in areas of high pollution. Their lung cancer rate was 37 percent higher than those in low pollution areas.

Despite repeating his studies and getting the same results, Pope said people are still skeptical. He even admitted he was skeptical when they first received the results. He said he and the other researchers were hesitant to publish their findings until they could replicate their data, but have still received heavy criticism from doubters.

In addition to respiratory illnesses, Pope also found that exposure to fine particulate air pollution affected the cardiovascular system, raising the risk of heart attack or stroke.

He said he did not wish to be a prophet of doom, but he also did not want to underscore the dangers of air pollution.

"Air pollution is just one of many risk factors for cardiopulmonary disease," he said, "but it is a risk factor that can be modified and controlled."



Copyright Brigham Young University 27 Feb 2007