{"id":63153,"date":"2022-12-14T08:45:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-14T13:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/?p=63153"},"modified":"2023-09-19T11:51:45","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T15:51:45","slug":"kerry-kelly-monitoring-salt-lake-valleys-dust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thestoryexchange.org\/kerry-kelly-monitoring-salt-lake-valleys-dust\/","title":{"rendered":"Monitoring the Risks of Salt Lake Valley’s Dust"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Utah, Kerry Kelly, a professor of chemical engineering , is developing low-cost tools that measure pollution exposure. (Credit: Courtesy of Kerry Kelly)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Editor\u2019s Note: Kerry Kelly is a winner of The Story Exchange\u2019s 2022 Women In Science Incentive Prize<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a recent evening in northern Utah, engineer Kerry Kelly was driving to an event when a dust cloud swept across the highway, obscuring her view. \u201cThis is a road with a 50-mile-per-hour speed limit and visibility dropped to zero,\u201d she says. \u201cThere was no forecast that was going to happen, no warning.\u201d Fortunately, she avoided an accident, but others have not been so lucky. A similar dust event in July 2021 caused a 22-vehicle pileup in southwestern Utah, killing eight people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Airborne dust is a type of “particulate matter” \u2013 a general term for microscopic solid and liquid droplets that might contain hundreds of different chemicals. It is generated from many sources, explains Kelly, associate professor of chemical engineering at the University of Utah and a developer of low-cost tools that measure pollution exposure. Some common culprits of airborne dust include mines and quarries, unpaved roads, agricultural activities, construction sites and parched land. Those particles, while larger than the kind resulting from combustion (such as wildfires), can still be inhaled and drawn deep into the respiratory system. Clouds of dust can irritate eyes, noses and mouths, making it tough for anyone to breathe, but especially those with asthma or other respiratory conditions. <\/p>\n\n\n

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As an unfortunate result of its bowl-like topography, northern Utah is periodically plagued by some of the worst air quality in the nation \u2014 and sometimes the world, says Kelly, who served for eight years on Utah\u2019s Air Quality Board, and currently sits on the State Air Quality Policy Advisory Board (providing guidance to the state legislature). The Salt Lake Valley is a scooped-out stretch of land that lies below the 12,000-foot Wasatch Range, where in winter temperature inversions (that’s warm air atop cold air) trap pollution close to the ground. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And in recent decades, \u201cclimate change and growing population are exacerbating our region\u2019s degraded air quality,\u201d says Kelly, with hotter, drier conditions causing widespread drought and, on windy days, airborne dust to blanket everything in its path. A half-dozen serious dust events earlier this year \u2013 including one that caused burning eyes in Salt Lake City (population: 2.5 million) alarmed residents and local air quality experts. It \u201cwas just unheard of, like wow, something has really changed,” Kelly says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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