Donate now to support the Upper Green River Alliance in our efforts to preserve Wyoming’s wildlife habitats.
Healthy Air Questionnaire Final Report
Clean Air & Healthy Communities
During early February, 2011 the Upper Green River Alliance and Citizens United for Responsible Energy Development (CURED) distributed a Healthy Air Questionnaire to Sublette County residents. The Alliance and CURED were interested in physical symptoms not reported elsewhere that concerned citizens may have experienced during elevated ozone events.
The Healthy Air Questionnaire was designed to increase public awareness of the potential health risks associated with local air pollution, and to see whether people are experiencing documented symptoms associated with breathing ozone and Toxic Air Contaminants.
The Upper Green River Valley is a proposed, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency non-attainment area for ozone, and has received the state’s first-ever Wyoming Dept. of Environmental Quality “ozone advisories.”
Ground-level ozone is dangerous not only for healthy residents, but especially for those with existing breathing problems, children, and the elderly. People are at risk of premature death from respiratory causes in association with increases in ozone concentration.
The Healthy Air Questionnaire found a pattern of responses which corresponds with symptoms recognized in the scientific literature that are associated with breathing ozone and Toxic Air Contaminants. The relationship between scientific studies, Sublette County ozone monitoring data, and results of the Healthy Air Questionnaire suggests that breathing in Sublette County may be hazardous to long-term and short-term human health.
The Upper Green River Alliance and CURED recommend that continual assessment of health risks associated with air pollution be conducted by health care professionals, and that health care providers begin to discuss the subject of ozone or other toxic air pollutants when being evaluated for upper respiratory symptoms.
Full report available here: Final Healthy Air report May 2011.pdf
American Lung Association: State of the Air 2011
Sublette County Receives an ozone grade of "F"!
Sublette County air quality has received an ozone grade of “F” from the American Lung Association. Of our residents, more than 2,300 people are at greater risk for cardiovascular disease, and 2,255 of our children, more active when they are outdoors, face greater risk of infection, coughing and bronchitis from air pollution. They may even suffer from lower lung function, putting them at greater risk of lung disease as they age. Over 770 older residents also face a greater risk of respiratory and cardiovascular problems from breathing ozone.
Headwaters Economics: Fossil Fuel Extraction and Western Economies
Fossil fuel development involves the extraction of enormously valuable resources, which are largely publicly owned. Development of fossil fuels also involves significant costs and risks. Private energy companies assume many of these risks, while the public bears others. The purpose of this report is to evaluate whether the approach taken to fossil fuel development in the Rocky Mountain West in the decade of the 2000s worked to maximize benefits and minimize costs to the region’s public.
Chapter 3 of this report focuses on the natural gas surge in the Greater Green River
Basin in Wyoming and other states. Case studies of municipal and county trends in Sublette, Sweetwater and other counties highlight the opportunities and challenges related to integrating volatile fossil fuel industries within a broader program of economic development.
Full report available at Headwaters Economics: http://headwaterseconomics.org/wphw/wp-content/uploads/Fossilfuel_West_Report.pdf
Nature Geoscience: Rapid photochemical production of ozone at high concentrations in a rural site during winter
By Russell C. Schnell, Samuel J. Oltmans, Ryan R. Neely, Maggie S. Endres, John V. Molenar and Allen B. White.
Ozone is an air pollutant that can cause severe respiratory health effects. Photochemical ozone production near the Earth’s surface is considered a summertime, urban phenomenon. Researchers report rapid, diurnal photochemical production of ozone during air temperatures as low as -17 °C in the rural Upper Green River Basin, Wyoming, in the vicinity of the Jonah–Pinedale Anticline natural gas field. Researchers find that hourly average ozone concentrations rise from 10–30 parts per billion (ppb) at night to more than 140 ppb shortly after solar noon, under the influence of a stagnant, high-pressure system that promotes cold temperatures, low wind speeds and limited cloudiness.
Full report available at http://www.nature.com/ngeo/index.html
