Study pinpoints magnesium plant as major source of northern Utah’s ‘brown clouds’

SALT LAKE CITY — A brand new federal report pinpoints a magnesium plant as a significant contributor to the winter “brown clouds,” or inversion, typically seen over northern Utah, and Salt Lake Metropolis, specifically.

The research from the Cooperative Institute for Analysis in Environmental Sciences got here from a interval of winter air air pollution in 2017 and confirmed that the plume from the US Magnesium refinery alongside the Nice Salt Lake produced “emissions of chlorine and bromine, often called halogenated compounds, [and] had been important contributors to the persistent winter brown clouds.”

In line with the report, fashions confirmed that chlorine and bromine emitted by the refinery was chargeable for 10-25% of the world’s particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) throughout air pollution episodes.

“Particulate matter incorporates microscopic solids or liquid droplets which can be so small that they are often inhaled and trigger severe well being issues. Particles lower than 2.5 microns in diameter, often known as wonderful particles or PM 2.5, pose the best threat to well being, affecting each lungs and your coronary heart,” the research says.

The refinery extracts steel from the brine of the lake.

Whereas the research was carried out utilizing information from 2017, its lead creator, Carrie Womack, mentioned the emissions of chlorine haven’t proven any important decline within the final 5 years.

Throughout analysis flights across the plant, the air scientists discovered was in contrast to something that they had beforehand sampled because of the excessive chlorine emissions.

“Near the plant, we did not even have to test the devices to know we had been flying via the plume,” Womack wrote. “We might odor it. It smelled like bleach!”

Winter air pollution ranges of PM 2.5 within the Salt Lake Valley exceed nationwide air high quality requirements a mean of 18 days per yr. These cases have been related to poor well being results, and through a time interval between 2003-08, one other research confirmed they accounted for a 42% increased charge of emergency room visits for bronchial asthma.