FLASHBACK 1998: Smog kills, even when the Utah Division of Air Quality says it doesn’t exist. 

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In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.

Title: Into Thin Air
Author: David Madison
Date: Mar. 19, 1998

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Hovering in the sky above the Phillips 66 oil refinery in Woods Cross is an imaginary pair of tired old lungs—they’re weak from a long life of breathing, and hypersensitive to smoggy air.

How carefully the government should protect those lungs—the public’s lungs—remains an issue where Utah and the federal government continue to disagree. So on March 26, the Environmental Protection Agency will face off with Phillips 66 and the State Division of Air Quality (DAQ) in federal court downtown.

The EPA says Utah watchdogs ignored 1,000 environmental violations committed by Phillips 66 at its local refinery. These alleged violations form the meat and potatoes of a full-course slap at the oil company. The EPA says Utah did nothing from 1994 to ‘97 as Phillips continued to spew illegal levels of sulphuric gas into the sky above Woods Cross.

Now the feds want the state to ‘fess up. Essentially, the agency wants DAQ to admit that it’s been haunted by air pollution coming from this, and perhaps other, local refineries. The EPA says Utah regulators have been unwilling or too afraid to tempt the political might of one of the state’s biggest polluters.

That’s why the EPA continues to prowl in Utah’s closets, shaking out skeletons and giving state regulators the torch-and-pitchfork treatment over the alleged violations. The EPA’s lawsuit could extract millions in fines from Phillips 66, but more importantly, it could also confirm the suspicions of air-quality activists who say the state often caters to the industries it’s supposed to regulate.

DAQ defends itself, but admits that Utah’s rules can be stretched to favor polluting industries. In the same breath they insist no strings were pulled for Phillips 66. The petroleum giant followed the law, say Utah regulators, who may wind up defending the company in court.

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The action against Phillips stands out as one of the larger lawsuits being pushed by the EPA. And it comes at a time when the agency is gearing up to implement a new, more stringent set of air pollution rules.

Currently, Salt Lake, Utah and Davis Counties are considered “non-attainment areas” where certain pollution levels exceed acceptable limits. Automobiles, oil refineries and other big industries are to blame for most of this pollution. The everyday name for it is smog. In EPA jargon it’s called PM 10, or “particulate matter” that measures a tiny 10 microns or less.

Salt Lake City has a worse PM 10 problem than larger cities like Denver and Phoenix. EPA regulators have watched Utah struggle with PM 10 and wonder how the state will handle tougher standards now in the works.

EPA’s new rules are targeted at what’s known as PM 2.5. These particles are smaller than PM 10 and may pose greater health risks once inhaled. Researchers don’t know exactly why PM 10 and PM 2.5 cause health problems. They just know that damage is being done.

BYU economics professor C. Arden Pope was one of the first to investigate the health impacts of PM 10 and PM 2.5. His research helped spur the EPA to action as it began to update its air-quality regulations and focus on stricter guidelines for PM 2.5.

These are the particles that are deeply inhaled into the lungs—the public’s lungs—whether they’re young, old, weak or strong. And according to Pope and the EPA, PM 2.5 particles increase mortality among the elderly. That’s right, PM 2.5 has the potential to actually kill old folks.

This population already struggles to breathe with tired lungs and the PM 2.5 particles exacerbate their troubles. Pope has also found that air pollution tends to deal a blow to children as well.

With such concerns in mind, the EPA appears determined to make an example out of Phillips 66. The federal agency wants Utahns to breathe easy and rest assured that polluters in Utah own up to their environmental crimes.

When Smog Isn’t Smog
It may sound absurd, but for reasons all their own, the state and the EPA can not agree on how to define air pollution.

Yes, it is easy to spot at sundown, all burnt orange and hazy. And sometimes Salt Lakers can even taste it when they walk out the door in the morning. Still, the EPA and the DAQ can’t agree on what is and what is not air pollution.

At the Phillips 66 refinery, vapors made of sulfur dioxide allegedly floated unchecked into the sky above the company’s facility in Woods Cross. For at least two-and-a-half years, a continuous emissions monitor was supposed to track all that got released from the refinery, but the device was often broken or shut down.

Other malfunctions reportedly caused the facility to belch out excessive levels of pollution. But because state regulators determined that these emissions were caused by “unavoidable breakdowns,” Phillips was not punished and the emissions were not considered a problem.

The same goes for literally a thousand incidents where the EPA says Phillips exceeded limits set by a system that records emissions every hour.

Utah officials refute EPA’s allegations, arguing that emissions should be averaged every 24 hours instead of 24 times a day. That way, certain peak periods can average out and companies like Phillips aren’t bothered by a few incidents when emissions soar over allowable levels.

EPA attorney David Rochlin says he’s troubled by a stream of documents that show illegal emissions coming from the Phillips refinery. The state was aware of the excess levels, but Rochlin says DAQ watered down their own records by averaging away the illegal emissions.

“I’d just as soon breathe clean air all the time and not just on a 24-hour average,” says Rochlin, insisting the rules require the state to record pollution every hour. “For them to be arguing now that it’s really supposed to be 24 hours, we don’t find that persuasive.”

The EPA has also started to scrutinize how the state regulates the Chevron refinery in North Salt Lake. It sent a letter to DAQ suggesting that officials “arbitrarily changed” their oversight of Chevron and may have relaxed their enforcement of air-quality standards in violation of the Clean Air Act.

Phillips 66, Chevron and DAQ Director Ursula Trueman disagree, chalking up the whole mess to one, big misunderstanding. Trueman also says the EPA is just blowing smoke when it accuses state watchdogs of going soft on refineries.

“EPA has made an incorrect interpretation,” she says, confident that DAQ and Phillips will prevail despite the EPA’s threat of drawn out litigation and astronomical fines.

But even if the Phillips case doesn’t turn into a lengthy court battle, at least one loophole in Utah’s air-pollution rules already appears to be on trial. It’s a legal tool adored by Utah industry, but the lax regulation now faces criticism from all sides.

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“I’ve fussed with this thing for years,” says the DAQ’s Marv Maxell, describing what’s known as the “unavoidable breakdown” rule. Maxell is a veteran out at DAQ and some say his tenure allows him to tell it like it is without fear of political payback.

Unlike Trueman, whose directorship sways in the political wind, Maxell doesn’t mince words when he describes how industry pressures DAQ.

The specialist in air-quality standards also speaks his mind about the EPA. Maxell believes that dragging companies into court isn’t the way to get things done. And like Phillips 66, he wishes the EPA would keep a shorter leash on its attack-dog attorneys.

But even if Maxell thinks Phillips 66 is getting a raw deal, he doesn’t softpeddle his opinion about the unavoidable breakdown rule. “It is fraught with problems,” says Maxell, “but industry likes it because it gives them a break.”

In its suit against Phillips 66, EPA attorneys contend that the oil company has a habit of excusing excess emissions by simply saying they were caused by an unavoidable breakdown. So when illegal amounts of sulfur dioxide float out of a stack at its refinery, EPA believes that Phillips turns to the state, shrugs its shoulders and says, “Oops, that was unavoidable,” even when the emissions are avoidable and the company is clearly at fault.

Under the unavoidable breakdown rule, the state lets excess emissions slide without writing up a violation. Former DAQ Director Russell Roberts, who proposed changing the unavoidable breakdown rule before being asked to resign in 1996, says he remembers feeling pressure from industries fond of the loophole.

“People are using a fairly fuzzy breakdown rule to shield them from having to fix a faulty piece of equipment,” says Roberts.

The former director supports the concept of giving companies some flexibility when it comes to breakdowns, but thinks the rule’s current wording invites abuse.

“Industry people would side up to me and ask, ‘Hey, what are you doing with that breakdown rule?’” recalls Roberts, who didn’t leave DAQ over this issue, but says that since his departure, the changes he proposed have probably stayed “buried under six feet of paper.”

With the way the rule’s written now, state regulators can not only forgive industry for air pollution that occurred during an unavoidable breakdown, it can also pretend the air pollution never happened.

“So there’s all this smoke and haze—no pun intended—around this and I think it’s real bad public policy for us to say those emissions never occurred,” says Roberts. “We need to acknowledge reality. With anything that actually happened in the environment, you can’t act like it didn’t happen.”

What’s Really in the Air?
BYU’s Dr. Pope thinks he knows what happens when people breathe dirty air. But for some, believing in Pope’s research isn’t easy. In a way, it’s a little like believing in ghosts.

Not only do the gaseous clouds rising off of refineries and other big industry resemble a spirit from the beyond, the research done by Pope and others arrives at a rather morbid conclusion: These scholars argue that air pollution actually kills people, and for some, that’s a lot to swallow.

But according to Pope, the Harvard School of Public Health, the EPA and a growing legion of researchers, it’s clear that PM 10 and PM 2.5 contribute to an increased mortality rate.

These tiny specks float into the sky every time people burn gasoline, coal, old tires or anything else. At the Phillips refinery, crude oil is heated as it’s transformed into gasoline and produces sulfur dioxide. This gas then escapes into the air and oxidizes, forming the tiny PM 10 and PM 2.5 particles that lodge in the lungs and cause health problems.

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Pope started looking at the health effects associated with air pollution back around 1987 when the Geneva Steel Mill shut down for 13 months. By comparing health statistics when the mill was both open and closed, he began to draw an association between increased smog coming from the mill and a jump in respiratory problems among children.

“The bottom line is we kept seeing reasonably clear associations,” says Pope. “It became reasonably compelling that something was going on.”

Pope and others working in the field say they’re stuck in the same place as those studying tobacco smoke. As with cigarettes, it’s apparent that smog doesn’t do a body good. Now researchers want to understand how PM 10 and PM 2.5 make people sick.

“There’s this myth with cigarette smoke that we know exactly what it is in cigarette smoke that kills people—we don’t,” says Pope. “It’s not clear what’s causing the damage.”

To explain the pervasive damage caused by air pollution, Pope makes an imaginary offer. He wants to show how smog affects everyone, so to illustrate his point, Pope places a cigarette in the mouth of every man, woman and child in Utah County.

“Imagine a study where I make every single person smoke half a cigarette,” suggests Pope. “Now I mean everybody, including those who’ve just had bypass surgery—everybody. Do you think you’d have some die? Do you think you’d knock a few off the top? If it kills one or two in a population of 250,000, that’s a lot.”

Air pollution is no different, says Pope. Research shows that dirty air, like a few drags on a cigarette, can tip the life and death scales for those already on the edge. That means children, the sick and the elderly are most susceptible. And it’s this population that will continue to suffer under smoggy Utah skies.

Refining the Rules
Dr. Joseph Lyon knows what to expect when the Salt Lake Valley darkens under a sky weighed heavy by clouds and smog.

“Every time there’s a flu epidemic and an inversion, everybody says it was caused by the inversion,” says Dr. Lyon, an epidemiologist and professor at the U. of U. School of Medicine. “This year people got the flu but there was no real inversion.”

Lyon provides this bit of insight before explaining why he doesn’t hold total faith in studies that link air pollution with mortality rates and serious respiratory problems. Considered one of Pope’s chief critics, Lyon believes that air pollution damages human health, but thinks researchers have a lot more to learn.

Given the EPA’s new rules for PM 2.5, Lyon worries that industry could be forced to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars in EPA regulation based on Pope’s studies.”

Of course, Pope’s work hardly stands alone. The EPA’s John Bachman agrees that “Utah has been a disproportionate player in this thing,” with Pope’s investigations sitting near the top of the research heap. But Bachman says the EPA sampled a diverse selection of published studies, looking far beyond Utah before it proposed its nationwide PM 2.5 regulations.

“It’s all adding up,” he says. “And there’s certainly enough to do something.”

Industry views the pending PM 2.5 standards as an undue burden being applied by a heavy-handed EPA, even though it could take decades before the new rules fall in place.

“They’re officially going to be able to put their head in the sand for at least six years,” remarks the Sierra Club’s Nina Dougherty, who thinks the EPA has gone easy on industry by including long delays with its new clean-air standards.

Folks on all sides think it’s going to be a long, litigious row to hoe before PM 2.5 becomes fully regulated. And even though the current Phillips 66 lawsuit isn’t part of the campaign for new standards, it may foreshadow future fights between the feds and the state.

Right now, the EPA has just begun to monitor for PM 2.5, and the agency attorney pursuing Phillips 66 says data from Salt Lake City shows a real problem. “We think that refineries could be a big part of it,” says the EPA attorney, noting that the new, national standards are designed to reduce premature deaths by 15,000 a year and decrease serious respiratory problems among children by 250,000.

Before Utah can do its part, the state’s DAQ needs to get out of its current “hate EPA mode,” says one observer, and stand up to polluters like Phillips 66.

“It seems to be that the state is being tolerant of things,” says Scott Endicott, an air-quality activist who works with a couple of different industry watchdog groups. As far as he can tell, the state would rather fight the EPA in court than risk ticking off one of the big, corporate players it’s supposed to regulate.

“I think that DAQ sort of doesn’t want to discourage industry,” says Endicott. “They’re treading lightly on this because they feel industry will come down on their backs.”