Think Salt Lake City’s nasty brown air looks bad lurking over the valley? Imagine how it looks caking your lungs. Anyone who’s spent time in the mountains in winter knows all about inversions, but few have trapped as much pollution as SLC’s this year, where the city’s air exceeded national safety levels on 22 days, compared to just one last year. “If the 40,000 women in Utah who are pregnant suddenly started smoking, that would constitute a genuine health emergency,” said the chief of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment. “But our levels of air pollution are causing the exact same consequences as if all these women were smoking.” What can be done about it? Not much, unfortunately — there’s no easy fix, and not much can be done about high pressures systems that trap the nastiness in place. Via NY Times.

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