In Tegan Spangrude’s Rose Park home, her loved ones have plenty of space both to roam and be cozy.
That includes Snowman, a tall white-and-gray sheepadoodle, who stumbles with excitement when guests knock on the front door, running in place while Spangrude holds his leash. There’s also Koleeky, a 42-year-old African gray parrot who’s shy, but can make his voice heard as he gets more comfortable. What’s on the mind of Garth, her scorpion living inside a little terrarium, remains a mystery.
Outside Spangrude’s house, there’s a tight community in one of the most ethnically-diverse neighborhoods in the state, with quaint bungalows, quirky parks and access to the Jordan River Trail. There’s also a manicured garden, reflective of the life she and her husband, Dallen Brown, have built inside. Among many lush plants and some heirlooms, the couple has aimed to start a family.
As a nurse, Spangrude had been curious about what gave her outdoor air a metallic, dirty taste when the smoke traveling downwind from refineries in neighboring cities is particularly visible. But what prompted her to participate in the study was something that made her teary-eyed.
“I had a miscarriage,” she said. “And it was really hard, you know, and there was a lot that went through my mind.”
After learning that there is a correlation between poor air quality and pregnancy outcomes on the west side of Salt Lake City, she wondered if the air she breathed contributed to her loss. A University of Utah study, published in 2018, surveyed more than 1,300 women and found a 16% higher risk of miscarriage “following short-term exposure to elevated air pollution.”
“Could the air quality have contributed to this? Ultimately, that could be true,” she said sitting at her dining table. “But the fact is that a lot of people have miscarriages, and for most people, there's nothing that you could have done better. You couldn't have eaten more vegetables, you couldn't have lost more weight, you couldn't have done anything different, and the outcome would have still been the same.”
That’s what led her to participate in a project that had four Salt Lake Valley households install indoor air-quality sensors built by Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation. With a small fan to pull in air samples, and scattered light, the device estimated the mass concentration of PM2.5 and monitored carbon dioxide, temperature and humidity for about two months.
After those two months, Spangrude said she felt more at ease, knowing that sometimes — despite the grit she felt on her teeth outside, drifting from the nearby quarry — the sensor inside her home didn’t register major spikes.
When Spangrude and Brown first participated in Reaching for Air, a multimedia series by KUER and The Salt Lake Tribune, they made known their intent to move out of Utah because of the air quality concerns. Their proximity to an expanding Interstate 15, the ailing Great Salt Lake and refineries were always top of mind. But as time went on, she said in a May 19 audio diary entry, financial challenges blocked the possibility of leaving.
“And I also don't love the answer of, ‘oh, well, your air quality is bad here, so you should just move.’ There are so many reasons that that's not a possibility for many, many, many people, including myself,” she said. “And also, shouldn't there be more being done so that citizens in the state and in the city don't have to move because their health is being threatened so badly by air pollution?”
In May, Spangrude’s sensor captured an average of 13 micrograms per cubic meters (µg/m3) of PM2.5, which is considered to be “good, almost moderate.” The lowest registered level was 11 µg/m3 and the highest was 639 µg/m3, in the “very unhealthy” range.
That day, while sauteing mushrooms and kale, she made the mistake of keeping oil over the heat for too long, burning it.
“I was shocked to look over and see my PM2.5 sensor had shot up to 639 (µg/m3), so that was really interesting for me to see,” she said, “just to put into perspective how good 11 and 12 (µg/m3) is.”
But the worst PM2.5 level happened on June 9, when some fish burned in her oven, filling the main level with smoke. That day the sensor reading went up to four digits, reaching 3,631 µg/m3, a “hazardous” level.
Memorable notes
Her husband didn’t regularly record radio diaries, but when he did, the notes were memorable.
On day 1, Spangrude said the first thing Brown did when he walked through the front door was “immediately come home and fart” near the sensor to see what would happen. As a result, PM2.5 jumped to 25 µg/m3 from about 11. That night, cooking created a spike of about 70 µg/m3, Spangrude said.
“I just found that interesting, that, first of all, my husband would do that. It's the most boy thing I can imagine anyone possibly doing. But secondly, that cooking exposes you to not that much more PM2.5 than breathing in a fart would,” she said laughing. “Oh, it's ridiculous.”
It was a joke at first that “confirmed the sensor is working,” Spangrude said. But, she couldn’t help but make the flatulence-induced spike a reference for other pollutants. One piece of incense, for example, made the sensor measure 21 µg/m3. More lit incense and candles caused a spike of about 150 µg/m3. Spray-on sunscreen caused levels to rise to 61 µg/m3 and made the dog sneeze, which made Spangrude reconsider using it again.
Brown also composed a song.
“I see skies of blue, farts that are green, registering red on the air quality machine. Hmm,” he sang off key in one entry.
The chaos of everyday living with loved ones in a small Rose Park house is polluting, but it isn’t that bad, she concluded. Now, Spangrude is less afraid and more willing to open up the doors and windows for an air reset.
Editor’s note: This story is part of Reaching for Air — a collaboration of The Salt Lake Tribune, KUER, Utah News Dispatch and the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, which explores air quality along the Salt Lake Valley’s west side.
The indoor air quality project and sensors were designed by Todd Whitney. Statistical Analysis done by Yue Zhao.
