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SALT LAKE CITY — Researchers on Saturday presented the findings of an indoor air quality study they conducted on over 100 households in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties this past winter.
University of Utah professor Daniel Mendoza, along with doctors Shana Godfred-Cato and Cara Lembo, worked for months swapping furnace filters in houses and testing the air quality inside and out, to get a better idea of what kind of air local residents have been breathing. They also took dust samples from the used filters and tested the levels of 43 different metals.
"We really wanted to learn about indoor and outdoor air quality, what that looks like in our community and across the valley, in general," Godfred-Cato said at a community meeting in the Glendale Library. A majority of the homes sampled were in the target area of Salt Lake City and West Valley City, with an emphasis on the west side of town.
Some of the results were "concerning," according to Mendoza.
Their two main findings:
- Indoor air quality can be significantly worse than that outside, even on a clear day.
- Compounds like uranium, arsenic, lead and others were pervasive in homes across the Wasatch Front.
After receiving "not a lot" of funding, one of the three researchers went to every house that participated, and found that in some cases the inside air quality ranked as "very unhealthy" on the air quality index, with a particulate count over five times higher than the World Health Organization guidelines, and significantly worse than the most polluted inversion day outside.
"Many studies have come out recently showing that indoor air quality, depending on what contaminants you have, could be about five times worse than your outdoor air pollution," Mendoza said.
"There's a lot you can do to improve the air in your home, some of which we find to be fairly cheap or reasonable," according to Godfred-Cato.
Making sure the furnace air filter is installed correctly, that it has a filtration rating of MERV 11 or higher, and is replaced every three months; cleaning ducts and vents with a vacuum; using a fan and keeping windows open while cooking can all be ways to immediately improve the indoor air quality.
The team received the final results from the University of Utah lab on Thursday. They say its difficult to know how dangerous the different metals found in residents' air filters really are. Many can be associated with health problems, like birth defects, low birth weight, respiratory illness and different cancers, but the EPA does not have exposure guidelines on a lot of these compounds, like Ytterbium, for example.
Some of these metals, like aluminum, are likely from transportation use. Arsenic and others are a result of industrial activity. Cesium can be associated with the infiltration of radon in the home, and the presence of uranium, Mendoza explained, is due to Utah being downwind from the nuclear testing that took place several decades ago in Nevada.
House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, and state Sen. Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, were at the presentation to support this and other studies, especially on the west side.
"This is not a Democrat or Republican issue, this is a health issue," Romero said "This is something we take very seriously. The air we breathe is the same, and the stuff we're learning now with this program is alarming."
"It's pretty clear from the data is that we're gonna have to do this more and more often," Escamilla said.
The researchers are hoping to expand the study and improve their controls in the future, depending on their ability to secure funding, so they can capture a wider swath of residents in the valley.
