- Air Quality

Last weekend it was cold and cloudy and the air was fine and clear.  Last Monday night as I prepared for bed, I all of a sudden felt that small tickle in the back and top of my throat that very quickly turned into a dry soreness.  My eyes started to burn and my nose started to become stuffed up.  I knew I was getting sick.  I pumped myself full of vitiman c and zinc, ate a banana and downed a glass of water then went to bed.  I hoped that that would head the sickness off at the pass.  Unfortunately I was wrong.  I woke up the next morning feeling awful.  I couldn’t breathe and I felt stiff and feverish.  My eyes burned, my head pounded and I couldn’t breathe through my nose.  I decided to skip my first full day of classes rather than force myself to walk around for 9 hours in the cold and potentially make it a whole lot worse.  I had made that mistake last semester and ended up in the doctors office and missing an entire week of classes.  Well come that Wednesday, I was feeling much better, except for my throat and nose.  I drank some water and showered and felt much better, my nose unplugged and my throat stopped hurting.  I figured I was still getting over the illness.  Well come this morning, a week later, I still wake up every morning with a sore throat that is full of crap and a stuffed up nose.  I have also noticed that ever since last Tuesday, the Salt Lake valley has had an especially bad inversion.  The “inversion” is when all this cold air gets stuck in the basin that is the Salt Lake valley because of an area of high pressure that holds it down.  This high pressure keeps the cold air in the valley along with all the smog and smoke and pollution that would otherwise be dispersed by the wind or by naturally rising into the upper atmosphere.  It has gotten so bad that the last few days, you can’t see for more than a mile or two in any direction.  All you see is this dense white cloud, almost like fog that consumes the entire valley.  At some places in the valley it feels like you’re in a very dusty room breathing in the dust particles.  It is disgusting.  The worse it gets the more I notice my nose and throat problems getting worse.  It is disgusting and the only relief seems to be to take a few hours out of your day and drive up one of the canyons until you are high enough to be above the inversion and you can finally breathe clean and clear.  However, who has a few hours to spare just to go breathe?

As disgusting as it is, the only way to get rid of it seems to be to stay indoors with air purifiers, head to the mountains or wait for a powerful enough storm to bring in the winds and the snow to push the high pressure off the top and let the crap rise and float away.