Colleen Kesler and her dogs enjoy walks in the park. However, she says she avoids brisk forms of exercise on red alert days. "I try to really pay attention to the red days. If the air quality is bad - I don't go out and exercise." That's because, like so many others who enjoy getting outside - the Salt Lake City woman doesn't do well when an inversion traps pollutants and causes a red alert day. "I have jogged or walked on a red day and I noticed a difference."
Dr. Steve Packham says Kesler is wise to avoid exposure to unhealthy air. "The issue within the first 24 hours of exposure is inflammation and swelling." And the state of Utah Toxicologist adds, "It's best for all of us to reduce the number of inflammatory responses we impose upon our lungs."
Of course, we all know when what an alert air day looks like. An inversion causes the haze to hover over the area. But measuring particulate matter is a much smaller process. Silver dollar sized air filters do the dirty work of capturing micro-grams of particulate matter. And dirty is the key word. The difference between a new filter and those that spent just 24 hours outside can be quite drastic.
Bowen Call, a Utah air monitoring manager showed us one of the daily filter measuring devices. He says the state also uses 20 state wide stations that give the Department of Environmental Quality hourly internet air sample updates. Dr. Peckham says the information he and his colleagues gather helps them, but he adds it's important to all of us because it "affects us every hour of everyday that we're outside." Dr. Peckham wants more people to visit and use the air quality internet site because it updates particulate matter and it shows the trends for the week - so people know exactly what type of air quality they're dealing with.
http://www.airquality.utah.gov/
