Something in the Air: The History Behind Missoula's Air Quality Regulations

If you’ve lived in the Missoula Valley, you’re familiar with the inversion that often happens in the winter months. What’s actually happening during an inversion, and what do wood stoves have to do with it? 

This week, the commissioners spoke with Kerri Mueller, air quality specialist, and Elena Evans, environmental health manager at Missoula Public Health, about the history of air quality regulations and why clean air matters for all residents.

Links mentioned in this episode: 

• Missoula Public Health Air Quality Division 
• AirNow Map 
• Montana Dept. of Environmental Quality Air Quality 

Thank you to Missoula's Community Media Resource for podcast recording support!

Transcript

Juanita Vero: [00:00:10] Welcome back to the agenda with your Missoula County Commissioners. I'm Juanita Vero and I'm here with my fellow commissioners and friends, Dave Strohmaier and Josh Slotnick. And today we're kicking off season six. Wow.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:23] Season six. Amazing. We are not that old. Wow.

Juanita Vero: [00:00:26] No season six of the agenda. Today we're joined today by Kerry Mueller of Missoula Public Health, who's going to chat about science and history of air quality here in Missoula. As winter is fully upon us, we're looking outside. It's kind of gray and dismal out there.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:42] No way in Missoula gray, dismal in the winter. It's an aberration. Look closer. Can you call somebody? Can you get. Can we get this fixed?

Juanita Vero: [00:00:48] Kerry yes we do. Kerry right here. She can fix this.

Josh Slotnick: [00:00:51] Why is it gray all the time in the winter?

Kerri Mueller: [00:00:54] Well, there's a couple reasons, but it's one of the reasons why Missoula has an air quality history, but we are prone to inversions in our Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:03] That is exactly an inversion, an inversion.

Kerri Mueller: [00:01:05] Or as most people say, the inversion in Missoula an inversion is what it sounds like. It's inverted air masses. And so when an inversion happens, when cold air sinks to the ground level and cold air is denser than warm air. And so when the warm air rises, it kind of creates this cap on top of Missoula. This can happen for a couple reasons, but in Missoula we are surrounded by mountains, and it's more common for inversions to happen when you have mountains all around you. And we have this bowl in which cold air just sinks and sits in. Inversions are more likely to happen when there's high pressure systems kind of creating stagnant air.

Juanita Vero: [00:01:48] Wait, so that's different than when we're looking out at the we're looking at the L and the M here up Hellgate Canyon and on cold on gray days, you get the line right at like the M.

Josh Slotnick: [00:01:58] That's from glacial Lake Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:00] You're right.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:00] Different topic.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:01] No, but the line, the line of of of of frost or cloud versus sun. Like so now I'm confused because if the if the the cold air was trapped, why isn't it colder down below? But when I look out on the mountains, it's very frosty. Yeah.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:16] Cold snow above that line.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:18] Oh, well, I haven't seen snow in a long time.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:20] What's that white stuff there? That's snow.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:23] Frost.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:02:24] Carrie? Carrie, what the hell are we talking about here?

Kerri Mueller: [00:02:27] So, Juanita, what you were describing is like the low laying clouds. And often that is when an inversion is happening, the cold air sinks to the bottom, and then it can trap air pollution. And it's more likely that clouds are going to form in that upper layer of the cold portion. But you can get above it. And maybe you've done this before, and you've hiked up the M when there's an inversion. And you can see above that layer and it's usually pretty flat, and it looks like there's a blanket on top of Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:02:55] Imagining like, oh, that's what glacial Lake Missoula used to look like.

Josh Slotnick: [00:02:58] Yeah, it's from the top of Paradise at Snowbowl. You look down and you see the gray lake. So this this cloud cap sounds like it could be potentially dangerous if they're if we're putting out emissions underneath that cap, they don't rise up and blow away. They just get stuck here. Exactly. Is that right?

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:15] Yeah. That warm layer that's sitting on top of the cold layer traps everything below that. And so anything that's being produced underneath that warm layer.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:25] Like can't go anywhere.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:26] Exactly. Cars. Car emissions.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:29] Wood. Wood stove. Emissions. Wood stove. So? So, is this the genesis of, uh, of our regulations related to wood stoves?

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:36] Yes, absolutely.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:37] And so?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:38] So talk to us.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:39] To get to the meat of it. Okay.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:40] Yeah. Back in the day. So I've been.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:42] Back in the day.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:43] I was I was here then I.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:46] I can't say I was.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:47] You were not.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:48] You want to tell us about that?

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:49] Yeah I do.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:50] What was it like back in the day?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:03:52] Yeah. What was it like? Were you burning coal back then?

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:55] Burning coal.

Juanita Vero: [00:03:56] And.

Kerri Mueller: [00:03:56] Oil.

Josh Slotnick: [00:03:57] So when I first came to college here in the 80s, early 80s, very many low cost student rentals had wood stoves in them. And we would end up with, I'd say, solidly two dozen stage one air quality alert days every winter. And the smell of Missoula was somewhat distinct, and it was a blend of wood smoke and the emissions from our our multiple mills that were run in 364 days a year, three shifts a day. And I'm not sure the genesis of the legislation, whether it came from the state or the city or where it came from. But a law was passed and as homes were sold, if they had wood stoves in them, this wood stove had to be removed in order for the sale to take place. And so, bit by bit, the wood stoves within our airshed went away. And due to all kinds of external economic factors that have nothing to do with Missoula, our mills slowly closed and lo and behold, our stage one air quality days in winter went mostly away, and now we have them in summer due to wildfires, which we didn't have nearly as badly back then.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:55] When was the catalytic converters created?

Josh Slotnick: [00:04:58] The 70s.

Juanita Vero: [00:04:59] But due.

Josh Slotnick: [00:05:00] To smog in LA and that put this the idea of them on the map, there was a time when LA was like right behind Santiago and Bangkok as worst air on the Earth. Catalytic converters changed, changed all that.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:15] Okay, that's what 70s. I thought it was later.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:05:18] What do you think about all this, Carrie?

Kerri Mueller: [00:05:19] Yeah, I was going to say there's so many pieces in there to pull apart.

Juanita Vero: [00:05:23] Because.

Kerri Mueller: [00:05:23] In Missoula, we have a bunch of sources of air pollution, you know, vehicles and wood stoves, fireplaces and industry, as well as dust from gravel roads and a couple other sources. But those are kind of the main ones. But from the 1950s to 1970s, industry was huge here. There was a lot of industrial wood waste burning, and burning was done in beehive burners or formerly or not formerly, um, commonly known as burners, TB burners, Wigwam. Burners. They produce a lot of smoke and a lot of emissions. And so the Clean Air Act passed in 1967 and again in 1969, but it gave local programs ability to have authority over air pollution in certain areas. And so Missoula public health was like, we want authority in Missoula County over our air emissions, and we want our own air program, which is what happened. And once that happened, we were able to act more on these sources that were emitting air pollution or mostly particulate matter or PM. And so by the early 70s, like 1974, 75, we were able to have stricter enforcement over industry, specifically the beehive teepee burners, which drastically reduced the amount of emissions from industry. But in 1973 was the Arab oil embargo, and that really shifted our reliance on burning oil to burning wood. And a lot of people relied on wood stoves to heat their homes. And we saw a really big spike of wood stoves and wood stove burners in Missoula. So once we kind of got industry a little more under control as far as air pollution, not to say it wasn't still there. We saw that residential wood stove use and wood burning was our major contributor to air pollution, which would cause in the wintertime when there's a strong inversion set up and it's gray, it would cause the the lights to turn on in the daytime downtown. I've heard from several sources that that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:07:35] And and there was a distinct.

Juanita Vero: [00:07:36] Smell. The smell was awful smell.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:07:40] So elsewhere in Missoula County, is there something similar in the Seeley Lake area as far as air stagnation concerns.

Kerri Mueller: [00:07:48] Yeah, definitely. There's also inversions that happen in Seeley Lake. And just as a bigger picture, inversions can happen any time of the year. It's not just the wintertime, but in the wintertime they're likely to be stronger and occur more frequently. With the use of woodstoves, it's more likely that we have air pollution built up under an inversion. So back to Seeley Lake. Yes, we do have. It's called the Seeley Lake woodstove zone. Seeley Lake has higher particulate matter pollution and higher pollution due to wood stove use. There's a lot of people up there that use wood stoves. And so the Seeley Lake wood stove zone is just a zone that has specific rules around what stoves can be installed up there. And they're a little more stringent than the rest of the county, but not as strict as the Missoula air stagnation zone.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:08:40] Mhm.

Josh Slotnick: [00:08:41] I'm glad Elena is here in the cheap seats because Also in 1974, if I got this right, I think I do. The county did a revenue bond with what was then called the Horner Waldorf Mill, and it was the largest bond the county had ever done. And what a revenue bond. What this means is the county is a conduit to the municipal bond market, but revenue from another entity is what services the debt, not taxes. So Missoula County put up. It was like $40 million for scrubbers at Horner Waldorf, which really helped supposedly clean the air coming out of the mill. And then that debt was serviced by Horner Waldorf, not by Missoula County taxpayers. But that too may have been a jump forward in the early 70s.

Kerri Mueller: [00:09:23] Definitely. And maybe the Elena were.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:27] You wanted to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:28] And I was I was not here then. I was just a mere child. But I stumbled across a newspaper article when attempting to do some research for something else and read about this, and was just blown away at the size of the bond. Like we haven't done anything even close to that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:43] He was a precocious child into debt service.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:45] I know a lot. A lot of nine Year olds are not.

Juanita Vero: [00:09:48] But.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:49] An early or early adopter of government. Nerdism.

Kerri Mueller: [00:09:52] Yeah, and I wonder if that was, um, in some way related to our air pollution control program.

Josh Slotnick: [00:09:57] Elena is saying yes.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:09:59] Oh, maybe we should introduce Elena. Uh, does.

Josh Slotnick: [00:10:02] She even need an introduction?

Elena Evans: [00:10:04] Yeah, this is Elena Evans, environmental health manager. But, you know, since Smurfit-stone stood up and started operating, the county participated in a number of environmental reviews and efforts to improve environmental conditions associated with it. So when new rules came into place and scrubbers were something that were going to start, need to be in place for environmental permitting, the county got involved in order to push for and address and help make it upgraded to the best version possible, as compared to just meeting some minimum standards. And so there was a strong effort there that really helped further our air quality efforts in Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:10:45] And is there a difference between paper mills versus, uh, say, the Bonner Mill or. I mean, were there issues?

Elena Evans: [00:10:52] Uh, yeah. I mean, the the biggest difference is the volume of wood that went through these different paper mills. And then part of it, too, was the different processes in place, like white pine sash, had a number of dip tanks and dip mechanisms. And then depending upon what product was the outcome, they would be burning or emitting different levels of particulate matter and or sulfur and or using different generators, boilers or just wood to power some of the machinery in their buildings. And so it kind of varied. But smurfit-stone was huge. White pine sash was, uh, a big contributor on the north side. And so, you know, we had other industries that were in place as well. And so it kind of changed throughout time what the industrial contributions were to the overall air contaminant or air budget.

Josh Slotnick: [00:11:51] So I had a question for Kerry. So we've been talking history, and this was back in the day, plenty of stage one air alerts. Every winter this was commonplace. They barely ever happen. Now in a winter in Missoula, even though we have this gray inversion. But we get unfortunately can get quite a few during wildfire smoke season. What do you think about that? Where where are we health wise and our air in summers in 20 in the in the 2020s?

Kerri Mueller: [00:12:18] Yeah, definitely. So since we have such strict rules around what stoves can be installed and can't be installed, we've really improved our wintertime air quality. And our major concern for air quality is wildfire smoke. Now, wildfire smoke emits a lot of different air pollutants, a lot of different gases and chemicals. But one of the main pollutants of concern is PM 2.5, or particulate matter. That's 2.5 microns in size.

Josh Slotnick: [00:12:47] How big is a micron in terms of is there something in our in our like the head of a pin, the end of a pencil. What do you think?

Kerri Mueller: [00:12:53] Yeah. So there's this I wish I had the diagram with me. And I know you can't show a diagram on a podcast, but it shows a human hair in comparison to Pm10, which is particulate matter ten microns in size. And then there's, I believe five across. Let me describe it this way. Pm10 is large enough that when we inhale it, it gets stuck in our nasal passages and in our throat and stuff and.

Juanita Vero: [00:13:22] Doesn't go it doesn't go in our lungs.

Kerri Mueller: [00:13:24] Yet our bodily functions are like initial bodily functions. Catch it. But PM 2.5 is so small that when we inhale it, some may get caught by our upper respiratory tract, but they can travel deep into our lungs. And then once they're at the deepest part of our lungs, they can even transport over into our bloodstream, which is where most of the health impacts come from.

Josh Slotnick: [00:13:48] And going from lungs to blood.

Kerri Mueller: [00:13:51] Yeah. So there's still a ton of research being done currently, but there has been a lot of research done recently that has shown so many negative health impacts from wildfire smoke, and it affects all parts of our body.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:06] In times of heavy wildfire smoke. Does wearing a mask help keep these particles from getting into your lungs?

Kerri Mueller: [00:14:13] Yeah. So an N95 will block out wildfire smoke if it's fitted properly. The thing with N95s is that sometimes it causes trouble breathing, which we wouldn't want that to happen, right? But an N95 mask can.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:28] Can catch, can filter them out.

Kerri Mueller: [00:14:30] Filter out wildfire smoke.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:31] So it's finding a balance between like heat stroke and suffocation and, uh, and, uh, trying to filter out the, uh, the particles uh, somewhere in, in.

Juanita Vero: [00:14:41] Do you have the graphics.

Kerri Mueller: [00:14:43] During.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:14:44] Hot times?

Kerri Mueller: [00:14:44] Yeah, a lot of times. Yeah. So that's why I'm always whenever people are talking about N95 masks, I'm always like.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:49] Well be careful.

Kerri Mueller: [00:14:50] Yeah, it could be really hot out. And heat stroke is more immediate of a health risk than the impacts of wild.

Josh Slotnick: [00:14:57] So if you're indoors and there's heavy smoke does the PM 0.25 get in there. Or 2.5 get you inside your house. Maybe the windows closed. You're inside your house. Does it still get in?

Kerri Mueller: [00:15:08] Yeah. So that was a study that my predecessor, Sarah Cofield, was a part of with EPA. And yeah, so there was a study done to compare indoor air quality to outdoor air quality during wildfire smoke events. And what they found is that often when the outdoor air quality was impacted with wildfire smoke, that particulate matter pollution went inside and those levels were similar and similar. They were similar and they often lasted longer indoors than they did outdoors.

Juanita Vero: [00:15:38] Oh, because there's nothing to clear it out. Yeah, exactly.

Josh Slotnick: [00:15:41] So how about these filters that you can make yourself or you can buy, now that we've been told we'll get the Hepa filter or do the DIY Hepa filter. What do those do for a person?

Kerri Mueller: [00:15:51] Those are such a great resource for anyone. Yes they work. So Hepa filters can filter out wildfire smoke. They can filter out a lot of other particles in the air. They can filter out some viruses and bacteria as well. So they don't just help for wildfire smoke. But if it's smoky in the valley and you know you're trying to cool off your home and you open up your windows, you're going to be letting smoke into your home, but maybe you don't have an AC unit or something. And so if you close those windows after your home's cooled, you can turn your Hepa air cleaner on. And if you had a air quality monitor, you could watch the level decrease within like the hour.

Josh Slotnick: [00:16:31] Wow.

Kerri Mueller: [00:16:32] They work really well.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:16:33] Kerry, we've covered a lot of territory, from wood stoves to wildfire smoke to from regulations to maybe education. What exactly do you do in your job? I mean, it's pretty wide ranging. It sounds, but it is.

Kerri Mueller: [00:16:51] I do a lot of different things. It depends on the season and the day. A lot of what my job or what I do specifically has to do with outdoor burning regulation. And so from spring to fall and even some in the winter, I am looking at conditions and seeing whether it's a good day to burn or not to burn based on the impacts that it will have on our populations as far as smoke production. But on top of that, I also monitor for wildfire smoke and other air stagnation events and air pollution stagnation events. And in the summer I write wildfire smoke updates, and I educate people about wildfire smoke and the health impacts and how you can reduce your exposure. We also permit industry such as gravel crushers and asphalt plants and mills and several other industry in Missoula County. Another big part of why our air quality has improved is that we also have regulations around paving, gravel roads and new roads. So we do. I do a little bit of work around making sure people are paving roads when necessary, and we monitor air quality every day all throughout the year.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:10] So how does a person find out what you get via monitoring?

Kerri Mueller: [00:18:14] Yeah, there's a couple websites that you can use, but the one that I always recommend is the fire and Smoke map which is fire Airnow.gov. And I recommend that one because it not only has our three regulatory monitors one up in Seeley Lake, one in Boyd Park by the fairgrounds, and then one over in Frenchtown, but it also shows Purpleair monitors, which are a easier to set up, lower cost air quality sensor that will measure PM 2.5. And it shows all of those. And there's a ton of them across Missoula and across the US. And so you can find an air quality monitor that's closest to you and know your local air quality.

Josh Slotnick: [00:18:57] Is there a link to that? Like if somebody was to go to our website, is there a way to easily get to that?

Kerri Mueller: [00:19:03] It's on the Missoula Public health website under Missoula. Public health. Environment. Air. And there's a couple links. It also links to today's air, which is a similar service through DEQ. But that map shows the regulatory monitors, which is also a great resource to look for air quality.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:25] Is it. And if you wanted a burn permit, like is that so. Okay, so say I want to burn and I'm out in the county. How do I determine whether. Or when is a good time to burn or do I just call you. What's the process?

Kerri Mueller: [00:19:37] Yeah. If you are looking to burn, you need to get a burn permit first, which you can go to burn gov.

Juanita Vero: [00:19:44] And how much do those cost?

Kerri Mueller: [00:19:45] They're $7. And on that site you put all your information. You do a little test that makes sure you understand when you can burn and what you can burn, and making sure that you're safe when burning. And then before you actually burn, you need to activate that permit. And you can do that by either calling the phone number that is listed on the permit that you receive, or activating it online at the same website. Burn. Gov. Gov.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:20:12] So in the vein of of burning, a topic that's near and dear to me is prescribed burning. And if you take a look at the the broad swath of history. The 20th century was a little anomalous in that literally, the amount of fire on the landscape and smoke in the air was suppressed due to fire suppression. And we are reaping the the results of that in some respects today, kind of saving up the fuel on the landscape for conditions that are now extreme, uh, times and uh, and so fire is not an anomalous thing. It needs to happen. And in fact, I would argue a lot more fire and to some extent a lot more smoke needs to be emitted at times. But to the extent that we can make some choices as far as as when prescribed burns occur, what are your thoughts as far as as how we go about the ecological restoration work that needs to happen, that requires fire on the ground that will emit smoke, but doing that in a way that mitigates to the extent we can adverse effects of that.

Kerri Mueller: [00:21:23] Our forests need fire to be healthy, but it does produce a lot of smoke. And that can have pretty significant impacts on populations. People that live near where these fires are happening, not all of them are happening right by a town, but there's a lot of moving parts that go into having a prescribed fire happen. You know, there's the experts on what the prescription is going to be, where the burn is going to happen. But my role in that is once the agencies that do the prescribed burning, such as BLM, Forest Service, DNR, once they've got that all together, they submit it to me and they say, we want to do this burn on this day. And then I look at the conditions and I see if the weather conditions for that day are optimal for smoke dispersion.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:10] What's what are optimal conditions.

Kerri Mueller: [00:22:12] Yeah. So it depends a little bit on the time of year. But ideally I'm looking for a mixing height that's above 2000ft.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:21] What's that?

Kerri Mueller: [00:22:22] It's the level at which the lower layer of air is mixing. And so the higher the mixing height, the better.

Josh Slotnick: [00:22:31] So if we go back to inversions, it's like 40ft off the deck, right.

Kerri Mueller: [00:22:35] There's no look at the mixing height. When there's an inversion it's going to be really low. And so the higher the mixing height the better. And then also looking at transport winds so that the higher mixing height allows for the transport winds to actually move that smoke that's produced away and mix it with the atmosphere and dilute it. So I'm looking at those conditions and seeing, you know, how big is this fire? What type of burn are they doing?

Juanita Vero: [00:23:03] And what do you mean by what type of burn?

Kerri Mueller: [00:23:05] There's several different types of burns that, like BLM or Forest Service, might submit for. They can do hand piles or broadcast.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:14] Yeah.

Kerri Mueller: [00:23:15] Broadcast or Understory. And then they can do like the large excavator piles. Mechanical piles. There's just a couple different types of burns.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:23:27] I'm assuming throughout the region there are other people like yourself doing similar jobs. And, uh, and we can certainly look at what conditions are here in Missoula County, but someone could be lighting it up over in Coeur d'Alene or something. Uh, sending smoke our way or to the east of us. And, uh, how does that coordination work?

Kerri Mueller: [00:23:49] Yeah, and that definitely could happen. But how it works in Montana and Idaho, we actually have this group called the Montana, Idaho Airshed management Group, and it has a website where all of the burners submit their prescribed burns. And then I coordinate with the Airshed coordinator and sometimes with state DEQ and state duck is the coordinator for most other parts of Montana. And so usually what happens is once there's a burn submitted, I take a look at everything, I take a look at the forecast, and then I call up the Airshed management person and have a conversation with them about the burn and say, you know, this looks great. This is a really good day for this. Or I say, you know, these are my concerns. And is there any way we could maybe reduce the amount of acres that are being burned or do test burns and then see how it goes on, on the ground? Or maybe it's restricted completely. So there's a couple of different actions that.

Josh Slotnick: [00:24:56] For you, you're looking at mixing zones like how high is that going to be. And Dave, you may answer this question, what are the conditions that are optimal for the burners? And are those two sets of conditions, are they the same? Are they potentially opposed? Is it just luck of the draw? So if you were back in Dave's day working for the Forest Service and you were going to manage a big controlled burn. What are the conditions you're looking for? And do they kind of rhyme with what Carrie's looking for?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:25:19] Well, there there can be overlap, but but not necessarily. Uh, if you're writing a prescription to accomplish certain ecological objectives on the ground, you may need lo a certain relative humidity to get a certain amount of combustion to happen. It just depends what it is that you're trying to accomplish, which may or may not align with the optimal dispersion of particulate matter and such. And and so that's, that's the challenge is where you might end up having uh, if you just had free burning wildfire during, during the summer months, which we absolutely do and have always had, as long as there's been cured vegetation and, and lightning on the landscape here. But those conditions may not be conducive to keeping our air clean. And our metropolitan areas.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:10] Also might be a great time just to let it all up and burn it and add the smoke to the smoke that's already there. And who's claiming what smoke.

Juanita Vero: [00:26:16] And that is the...That is the that.Is the.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:26:18] Problem because, uh, you've got, uh, wildfires that are roaming across the landscape and, and the smoke is, is basically as long as it's not one of our agency staff out there lighting it up, it's basically an act of God, so to speak. Uh, however, this is the challenge when you have someone with the match or the torch that, uh, might be accomplishing the same ultimate objectives as that wildfire. But we have the challenge of it's it's a human initiated thing. And so regulations kick in.

Kerri Mueller: [00:26:50] Yeah. And I just want to go back to something you said, Juanita, that, you know, if there's smoke, why not just add more.

Josh Slotnick: [00:26:57] And so the " let 'er rip" philosophy.

Kerri Mueller: [00:27:00] Yeah.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:27:00] And which I kinda like.

Kerri Mueller: [00:27:01] And there's. So if you go on to that fire and smoke map and you look at the air quality, there's different levels of air quality and it's defined by the air quality index. So there's like green is good air quality and then it's moderate and then it's orange for unhealthy for sensitive groups. And the risks the health risks increase as air quality worsens. And so if it's unhealthy for sensitive group or orange air quality, we don't want to allow more pollution to increase the air quality to unhealthy levels. We I would rather it stay down in unhealthy for sensitive groups versus increasing that and adding more pollution to the problem.

Josh Slotnick: [00:27:43] Yeah. I mean, are we ever in a situation where let's just breathe this amount of bad smoke now as opposed to potentially breathing a whole lot more bad smoke later? Well, Elena needs Elena.

Juanita Vero: [00:27:54] Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

Elena Evans: [00:27:55] I think it's great that this is brought up. And I think it's also wonderful to have this ecological perspective, but also a big part of why the air quality program is rooted in the Missoula public health. Because although we are seeing more and more smoke in the summer as compared to the winter, when you think about somebody who's grown up in Missoula and is taking in smoke, historically it was in the winter. Now it's in the summer. What we're kind of thinking about as well is what can we do to decrease that amount of smoke that an individual takes in over the course of their lifetime? Because there are very significant health associations with increased smoke intake. And there were actually some, some studies up in Seeley Lake associated with some of those fires. And so we know that.

Juanita Vero: [00:28:42] The 2017 fires.

Elena Evans: [00:28:43] Right, right. And so we know that there are very real health impacts from taking in smoke. When we think about the Clean Air Act, it's really focused on states and counties. And so when we think about wildfire smoke and wildfire smoke coming into our county from Canada, from other states, we really can't do much about that. But what we can do is deal with things in the county. And so that's why the county has burn permits, looks at prescribed burns, and continues to work to keep the air clean in the winter, even though we're seeing less air quality impacts during that time. Because over your lifetime, that will increase your likelihood for healthy lungs, for a decrease in certain diseases and things like that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:29:26] So here here's my last bit of commentary. So, so part of this is, I think, a simple staffing and organizational issue at the federal level, where I would contend that we need to get exponentially more fire on the ground throughout the American West. And if we're trying to balance that with limited windows of burning that would mitigate adverse effects of smoke, then we need to be able to more nimbly deploy adequate resources during those windows to get the job done. Just as we we seem to be able to move pretty quickly when there's a wildfire and bring resources to bear. But it's like if we're talking prescribed burning much more difficult to get the resources to where we need to do the burn. When there is that burn window.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:18] That seems to have a whole lot to do with how the different agencies interact around controlled, prescribed burns versus how they interact when they're fighting a wildfire.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:30:28] I think that's absolutely right.

Juanita Vero: [00:30:30] And the risks and liabilities.

Kerri Mueller: [00:30:32] Yeah. As far as what you were saying, Dave, I am on the air quality side of things. I don't know all the ins and outs of what it takes to get a prescribed burn, get prescription and get all your resources ready. All I see is the day before the burn, whether it's good for air quality or not. And typically, air quality is not necessarily the one item restricting more prescription from happening in more prescribed burns from happening.

Josh Slotnick: [00:30:57] I imagine it has more has a lot to do with those agencies sharing resources and coordinating and coming up with money to do it. I mean, we've heard actually, truthfully, entities have invited us out on field trips and in a sense bragged. And good on them, too, for, look, we got this 20 acres done and we got these four agencies together, and we got these three grants, and it took four years and we accomplished it. We got the 20 acres done. And it looks freaking great, right? And there's 300,000 acres out there.

Juanita Vero: [00:31:27] That needs to be treated.

Josh Slotnick: [00:31:28] They need to be treated. This is in no way of laying any blame at the feet of the regulators. The regulation just seems to be part of the package. But if we could address prescribed burns with the same intensity we addressed fire suppression, we would be way farther ahead. And that has nothing to do with what we do at the county.

Kerri Mueller: [00:31:46] Yeah. And just another point on that is the prescription part of it. Prescription needs to be met in order for the fire to happen. And so if those weather conditions, the RH other aspects aren't relative humidity. Relative humidity aren't met, then the burn can't happen. And some years we just have a spring where they don't burn anything because the conditions just aren't there.

Kerri Mueller: [00:32:12] And if here's nothing to do with air quality.

Josh Slotnick: [00:32:14] And if the conditions weren't there and a prescribed burn was to happen, there is a far greater likelihood of the thing getting out of control. Which is to Juan's point about risks and liabilities. My guess is, and please tell me if I'm wrong. That's what that concern is about relative humidity and risk and liability. Can you imagine a situation where if somebody works for the Forest Service and they say, yeah, let's do it, we're going to burn here. And the and the mixing zone is right. And you say, okay, which is just what you're supposed to do. And then the thing spins out of control and homes or God forbid, even lives are lost. What does this mean for that person or that agency that gave the thumbs up?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:32:47] I think that's partially the case. I think risk and liability always is a subtext to these conversations, but also from an ecological standpoint, kind of the letter rip approach might in many cases be the ecological standard by which some of these fires would typically burn during heat of summer. Um, and so what you're trying to nudge up against is how can you keep this fire under some semblance of control, yet still accomplish the the amount of combustion of of the understory of the forest that might typically happen?

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:23] I think This small conversation exemplifies how complicated this is. We've got ecological needs, risks that have to be attended to, property and and life and air quality where everybody's got to be breathing a whole bunch every day. And these things are not always all in line with one another.

Kerri Mueller: [00:33:40] Yeah. And as far as the air quality side, the EPA has set standards for air quality. So the amount of PM 2.5 and Pm10 that's allowable within a year, within 24 hours. There's certain standards.

Josh Slotnick: [00:33:53] How They do it by the year a cumulative.

Kerri Mueller: [00:33:56] Yeah. So it's called the National Ambient Air Quality standards, the annual average. And so the annual average for PM 2.5 was recently lowered a couple years ago from 12 micrograms per meter cubed to nine micrograms per meter cubed, which is right at that boundary level of good to moderate air quality. And when we're looking at Missoula County, we've met those air quality standards for PM 2.5. But now that that standard has lowered to nine. One area in the county over in Frenchtown is at risk of exceeding those standards. So now with the National Ambient Air Quality standards, you are allowed to remove exceptional events which include wildfire days, wildfire smoke and some prescribed fire. It's not super common. The annual average is done over a three year annual average, but in Frenchtown it was 9.5 for the last three years.

Josh Slotnick: [00:34:51] What do you think that's due to?

Kerri Mueller: [00:34:53] There's a lot of different sources of air pollution out there, and it can be from prescribed fire, from outdoor burning, from wood stove smoke. It's an annual average over each year for three years.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:06] And is French down out of the airshed.

Kerri Mueller: [00:35:08] So it's within.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:10] The wood stove. Wood stove rules apply in Frenchtown as well as Missoula.

Kerri Mueller: [00:35:13] Yeah, so it's outside of the air stagnation zone, not necessarily outside of the same airshed as Missoula.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:19] The stagnation zone is the legal jurisdiction.

Kerri Mueller: [00:35:22] Yeah. So the air stagnation zone, which is made in 1981, is 4 to 5 miles outside of city limits. And a lot of wood stove rules are attached to the air stagnation zone as well as paving rules. But Frenchtown is outside.

Josh Slotnick: [00:35:35] Okay. So what?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:35:37] So what happens? Someone out there listening might wonder, well, who cares? We'll just thumb our nose at the federal government and go about our business. Well, what what happens if we exceed some of these standards?

Kerri Mueller: [00:35:49] Yeah, well, a big reason why we have such strict wood stove Woodstove regulations and pellet stove regulations in Missoula is because we exceeded the Pm10 standards in the 80s. Because that happened, we needed to write a state implementation plan detailing the actions we're going to take to reduce pollution in Missoula. So if that happened in Frenchtown, we would need more rules to detail how we're going to reduce air pollution.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:36:16] But but would we be I mean, fined or legal action? What would be the, uh, the result of, uh, just kind of business as usual other than having to write a plan?

Kerri Mueller: [00:36:27] Well, the EPA would designate us as non-attainment status, and we would be required to submit a a state implementation plan.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:36:37] What if we didn't do that?

Elena Evans: [00:36:38] Yeah. Well, so part of the reason right now that we have different zones and we have a local air program is so that the whole county isn't subject to all of the rules that are in the air stagnation zone. If we didn't have smaller zones and air sheds, and if we didn't have these rules in place that were required to adhere to, then either the state or the EPA would have to enforce them. And it's easier to do that at a county wide scale. And so if, say, we weren't to meet that standard, we would have to come up with a plan as to how to do so. If we decided that we weren't going to implement anything, then the state is required to enforce the Clean Air Act. Because the Clean Air Act is a federal regulation, some of it can be delegated to the state. The state is delegating some of that to our local county program, and that enables us to be more nimble in how we ensure that we meet those standards. If we don't, then our program and or other requirements can be placed upon the county at the state and the federal level. But they're not as likely to have, you know, a small Seeley Lake zone or an air stagnation zone that's mostly focused on the city of Missoula.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:52] Great answer.

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:53] Yeah, thanks.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:54] And by no means am I suggesting that we, uh.

Juanita Vero: [00:37:56] Thumb our nose.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:37:57] Thumb?

Josh Slotnick: [00:37:58] I was wondering if you if you were behind some one of that, uh, refuge takeover back in your original state of Oregon?

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:04] Oh. The malheur.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:05] Yeah, like we don't need the feds. We'll screw them. We're going to do our own thing. Yeah, I was harkening back to that. Yeah, but that.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:38:14] Went.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:14] Well. So, Carrie, this has been super fascinating. And it's great to have both of you guys here. Font of knowledge and facts. People want to know more?

Kerri Mueller: [00:38:26] Yeah, definitely.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:26] How do they dig in some more?

Kerri Mueller: [00:38:28] Yeah. So you could go to our website Missoula. Public health. Forward slash air. Um, to learn more about the history.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:36] Is there a search bar? We could just.

Kerri Mueller: [00:38:39] Search Missoula Public health. There you go.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:41] I think I already forgot, but could I just go to Missoula Public Health and just type in my question?

Juanita Vero: [00:38:46] Yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:47] Yes. Perfect. And then.

Kerri Mueller: [00:38:48] Um, if you do have a specific question or if you want to share your.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:53] I mean, I can imagine.

Kerri Mueller: [00:38:54] Somebody. Of bad air quality In the day, you could email us.

Josh Slotnick: [00:38:57] I'm going to try and live in the future, I promise. So I could just imagine somebody going to our website and just saying, is it safe to go outside with my kid today? Can they type that in?

Kerri Mueller: [00:39:07] It might not answer that specific question, but it will lead you towards air quality and learning about the air quality.

Josh Slotnick: [00:39:15] You get, where you need to be Eventually.

Kerri Mueller: [00:39:17] And learning what levels of air quality mean what and and what actions you should take. And if you should reduce your time outdoors.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:24] Your weather app on your phone will actually will make suggestions whether or not your kid can go out.

Kerri Mueller: [00:39:29] I mean, we Try to rely more on airnow.gov. Because we don't 100% know where the data is coming from.

Juanita Vero: [00:39:36] Got it.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:39:37] I wonder if you did a search on board of county commissioners in hot air. What would happen?

Kerri Mueller: [00:39:44] So check that out. Really good resources on Montana wildfire smoke .org. And so that website is a partnership between Missoula Public Health and Climate Smart Missoula to get all the information around wildfire smoke and health impacts and how to check the air quality and all of those things, what you can do to reduce your exposure. All of that is in one spot, and that's a really great website. And our website links to fantastic.

Josh Slotnick: [00:40:13] Great.

Kerri Mueller: [00:40:13] But then people can also email us at air quality.

Josh Slotnick: [00:40:16] Is it easy to get to instructions on via our website on how to make your own Hepa filter?

Kerri Mueller: [00:40:21] Yes on Montana wildfire smoke. Org there are instructions for how to do a DIY air filter.

Josh Slotnick: [00:40:27] Yeah, especially given what I've learned today from you that they really work and they're not very easy. Easy to make, don't cost much. And because who knows, we could have a rough summer of wildfire wildfire smoke. And we want people to be breathing clean air in their homes.

Kerri Mueller: [00:40:40] Yes.

Josh Slotnick: [00:40:41] So, Carrie, I imagine you listen to plenty of podcasts and read interesting books and watch cool TV shows and.

Juanita Vero: [00:40:47] Any.

Josh Slotnick: [00:40:48] Of those things. Listen to great music. In the recent past, did you stumble into anything you thought? Well, that was really worth remembering. I'd love to resay this to a friend in any of those genres of culture. Anything come up?

Kerri Mueller: [00:41:00] Yeah, I recently read Wild Pork and Watercress, which is a cool name. It's an adventure of two a young person, an older person going into the New Zealand bush. And what stuck with me was just that you can keep exploring and really appreciate the natural environment around you, even if your situation is not the most ideal. And so I really appreciated that book and I recommend it.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:27] Say the name one more time.

Kerri Mueller: [00:41:28] Wild pork and watercress.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:29] Great. Thanks for.

Juanita Vero: [00:41:30] That. So great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:41:32] Thanks so much for joining us today.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:34] Thanks for coming and thanks.

Juanita Vero: [00:41:35] Thanks, Elena.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:36] Yeah, yeah. Thanks for all the Good work, you guys. And MPH does. Thank you.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:41:40] Thank you.

Kerri Mueller: [00:41:41] We're happy to.

Josh Slotnick: [00:41:43] Thanks for listening to the agenda. If you enjoy these conversations, it would mean a lot if you would rate and review the show on whichever podcast app you use.

Juanita Vero: [00:41:51] And if you know a friend who would like to keep up with what's happening in local government, be sure to recommend this podcast to them.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:41:57] The agenda with the Missoula County Commissioners is made possible with support from Missoula Community Access Television, better known as MCAT, and our staff in Missoula County Communications Division.

Josh Slotnick: [00:42:09] If you have a question or a topic you'd like us to discuss on a future episode, email it to communications@missoulacounty.us.

Juanita Vero: [00:42:17] To find out other ways to stay up to date with what's happening in Missoula County, go to Missoula.

Dave Strohmaier: [00:42:24] Thanks for listening.