Does Davis County Really Have Better Air Quality? (Bountiful: stats, agricultural)

[Just_A_Gal]

Hi everyone, I have been doing a bunch of research into the SLC area with the idea of possibly moving here. I have run into a question about the air quality which has me stumped. From my understanding of inversions the air quality should be fairly similar anywhere in the valley, however, when I went to the Government site for air quality and compared the air quality of Davis, Weber, Utah, and SLC counties I found that the air quality for Davis county is listed as significantly better than that of any of the other counties. Does anyone have an explanation for why that would be? Maybe the way the data is collected makes the air quality seem better than it actually is somehow? Or is the air quality in Davis truly better and my understanding of how pollution from inversions work is wrong?
Thanks for any insight you can give!

[elcee499]

We hear a lot of discussion about the overall tendency for inversions to occur in our area, and its clear that the same weather phenomena affects the entire Wasatch front. However, my thought is that the quality of the air being generated in a specific area and (then being trapped when an inversion occurs) also plays a significant role. If there are more cars and other pollution generators in the Salt Lake valley, then it stands to reason that the overall air quality will be worse when the pollution cannot dissipate. This was something I though I could observe when I looked down toward the valley from the bench in Weber County. On bad air days in January, the smog appeared darker and dirtier along the I-15 corridor. Davis county has refineries along the south end and the Air Force base to the north, but the areas in between have historically been more rural/agricultural and absent of industrial polluters.

[Geo-Aggie]

For Ozone? Yes - less idling cars.

For Particulate Matter? No - There is still just as much population density of people running furnaces and burning logs, and things are actually worse in Southern Davis County (Bountiful/WX/NSL) due to the refineries.

[Just_A_Gal]

Originally Posted by Geo-Aggie

For Ozone? Yes - less idling cars.

For Particulate Matter? No - There is still just as much population density of people running furnaces and burning logs, and things are actually worse in Southern Davis County (Bountiful/WX/NSL) due to the refineries.

Interesting. I thought what I read said that both particle and ozone were significantly better in Davis county, but now I'll have to go back and look. If I remember correctly the one air monitoring station is in the middle of Bountiful so it would be especially odd to me if Bountiful is particularly bad even though the stats on the EPA site say differently. I'll have to look it up again.

Does anyone know if I am allowed to include a link to an outside source of data like that? I vaguely remember a rule restricting what external links you can post. I'll try and find it again myself but if anyone knows offhand it would be nice to not have to go digging around.

[Just_A_Gal]

Originally Posted by elcee499

We hear a lot of discussion about the overall tendency for inversions to occur in our area, and its clear that the same weather phenomena affects the entire Wasatch front. However, my thought is that the quality of the air being generated in a specific area and (then being trapped when an inversion occurs) also plays a significant role. If there are more cars and other pollution generators in the Salt Lake valley, then it stands to reason that the overall air quality will be worse when the pollution cannot dissipate. This was something I though I could observe when I looked down toward the valley from the bench in Weber County. On bad air days in January, the smog appeared darker and dirtier along the I-15 corridor. Davis county has refineries along the south end and the Air Force base to the north, but the areas in between have historically been more rural/agricultural and absent of industrial polluters.

That is also super interesting, and, at least intuitively, makes a lot of sense, thanks! If there isn't any wind within the inversion then even though all the air in the valley trapped in one place, the valley, it makes sense that different there would be pockets with better an worse air quality.

I'm just curious, would you include Central and northern bountiful in the middle section with potentially better air quality?

[Geo-Aggie]

I grew up in Northern Bountiful, near Pages Lane, you could most definitely smell the refineries during the Winter.