Utah is accustomed to poor air quality in the winter. But summer ozone pollution is also a growing problem. Now, there’s a link to an even greater health risk.
“We found that exposure to ozone pollution during pregnancy was associated with increased odds of the baby having intellectual disability,” said Sara Grineski, a University of Utah sociology professor who focuses on health and environmental research.
Those disabilities mean the child struggles with functioning in daily life because of their cognitive capacity. Grineski is a co-author of a new study, published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, that documented the link in Utah.
Ozone is mostly created from emissions that interact with the sunlight. Wildfire smoke also plays a role. While evidence shows PM2.5 pollution exposure during pregnancy can increase the chance a child will have an intellectual disability, Grineski said her ozone study hasn’t been done before.
“This analysis would be able to contribute to a knowledge gap with respect to ozone and intellectual disability.”
Grineski’s team collected records from the Utah Population Database of children who have intellectual disabilities and raw ozone data from the Environmental Protection Agency. They also looked at ozone exposure levels during pregnancy, exposure data linked to children with intellectual disabilities born between 2003 and 2014, the children's siblings and population controls to determine the outcome.
The research shows ozone poses the highest risk during the second trimester of pregnancy, but Grineski said other trimesters could also be equally as high.
There’s not a definitive answer to what is happening to the pregnant body when it’s exposed to ozone pollution, but Grineski said it’s a time of rapid development where “ozone can cause oxidative stress that can interfere with how the baby is developing.” She added there is research that suggests a pregnant person breathing ozone can harm the placenta.
To limit ozone exposure during pregnancy, Grineski recommends buying an air purifier, changing HVAC filters or swapping them out for higher-quality ones. She also said people should limit the time they spend outdoors during bad ozone days.
Bryce Bird, the director of the Utah Division of Air Quality, is acutely aware of Utah’s growing ozone problem. He said the state hasn’t been in attainment with federal ozone standards since 2015. That’s partly because the EPA implemented stricter standards the same year.
The division has created plans, especially targeted at the manufacturing and industrial sectors, to bring ozone emissions down. He said cars, gasoline and other emissions have also gotten cleaner. They’ve also established regulations to reduce emissions at home such as from paints and solvents or water heaters. As a result, Bird said there’s been a 30% reduction in local emissions.
But it’s still not enough to meet the protective ozone standards set by the EPA. Bird is concerned that some of the mitigation tactics haven't been effective at reducing actual ozone concentrations.
One of the main reasons for that, Bird said, is that Utah has experienced hotter, drier summers with less monsoon activity, which leads to more days where ozone can form.
“It's kind of a tough situation right now,” he said. “We have a standard that we're obligated to meet, a lot of the local controls have already been put into place, or they're not as effective at addressing the ozone pollution.”
Bird added that over the summer, the division and other partners conducted a large ozone study in the Salt Lake Valley. They are currently analyzing the data and hope to get the results back in a few months.
“We're really excited to see a focused research project right here in the valley that will help us answer some of those questions about what we can do next, or what we can do better to address the ozone situation.”
