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Show i' f ' tg Vc Wood Stoves Cause Of Valley Pollution Orem-Geneva Times- January 15, 1981 Wood-burning stoves used by local homeowners to cut down heating bills are becoming an important and dangerous factor in air pollution in Utah Valley. According to Dr. Calvin H. Bartholomew, Bar-tholomew, a Brigham Young University Univer-sity associate professor of chemical en-gineering, en-gineering, the growing reliance on wood-burning stoves is creating "a potential here for a very serious health problem." "With the increase in the number of wood-burning stoves being bought, and the increase of wood-cutting permits being issued, it is likely that we could get some very bad pollution problems in the next few years," Bartholomew said. That conclusion is backed by a recent study conducted by three students in an air pollution class taught by Bartholomew. Using computer models to determine deter-mine the effects of wood-burning stoves on air pollution in Utah Valley, Dan Frost, Lynn Gordon and Ray Richards, chemical engineering students, concluded: "The increasing numbers of wood-burning stoves may significantly affect air pollution levels in Utah Valley." The most conservative estimates of the report claim that in populated areas in Utah Valley, the use of wood-burning stoves may increase particulate pollution 10 to 20 percent in the next decade. Bartholomew said if the use of the stoves continues to increase, the problems could be even greater. He said the computer model showed that if SO percent of the homes in a densely populated area of the valley used the stoves frequently, it could double the pollution levels now experienced during a temperature inversion. .The problem of air pollution from wood and coal stoves is not a new one, Bartholomew said, but there is an added concern now. "We had pollution from coal- and wood-burning stoves in the 1940s before natural gas was available, but the population popu-lation density was small enough that it didn't have the effects it would have now," he said. "We should not even think about going back to wood and coal for space heating in populated areas." In fact, Bartholomew advocated curtailing the use of wood and coal stoves. "If we don't, we could be looking forward to air pollution episodes of serious magnitude, with a large part of our population suffering illness and even death," he said. . The report says the use of the stoves is already a factor in air pollution in the valley, and may pose a more serious threat than other sources of air pollution. For one thing, burning wood creates smoke with very small particles-smaller particles-smaller than many other forms of pollution. Those smaller particles are the ones most likely to lodge in the lower respiratory areas-and the ones the body has the hardest time removing, causing or aggravating respiratory res-piratory diseases. "Thus the increased use of wood-burning wood-burning stoves may easily have an impact not only on increased particulate concentrations and visibility reduction, but more importantly on the health of people living in densely populated areas of Utah Valley," the report concludes. con-cludes. One reason wood-burning stoves pose such a serious air pollution problem is that home chimneys are so low that during an air inversion the dirty air is dumped into the neighborhood neighbor-hood and stays there," creating the most dense concentration of small particulates par-ticulates in the areas of greatest population density," the study says. Industrial pollution, on the other hand, is usually expelled through tall smoke stacks where it can be dispersed dis-persed by the winds in the higher atmosphere at-mosphere instead of concentrating in one area. Bartholomew said Utah Valley experiences ex-periences 40 to 50 air inversions a year, mostly in the fall and winter months and some lasting a week or more. It is not uncommon for the particulate count in the valley during an inversion to exceed the EPA limit of 260 micrograms micro-grams per cubic meter for a 24-hour period. New pollution control devices planned for industry should bring those levels down to the accepted limits, but if the use of wood-burning stoves is not curtailed, that reduction will be more than offset by homemade pollution in the heavily populated residential areas of Utah Valley, Dr. Bartholomew said. Back Wages Restored To Utah Employees Employers agreed to restore $674,963 in wage underpayments to 2,428 Utah workers for violations of minimum wage, overtime, equal pay or age discrimination provisions of federal labor standards laws in fiscal 1980. Doyle Love-ridge, Love-ridge, Regional Administrator Adminis-trator for the U.S. Labor Department's Employment Employ-ment Standards Administration Adminis-tration (ESA) in Denver announced enforcement results. "These substantial findings result from the department's continuing commitment to workers and protection of their rights," Loveridge said. "The minimum wage law has continued to protect workers at the low end of the wage scale by providing pro-viding a minimum standard stan-dard of living and also by preventing these workers from shouldering an unfair un-fair burden in the fight against inflation." In the six-state Rocky Mountain region a total of $2,386,540 was restored to 14,311 workers Loveridge said. On Jan. 1, 1981 the minimum wage increased from $3.10 to $3.35 per hour affecting approximately 160,000 workers in the six-state region. Violations of the minimum wage and overtime over-time provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) accounted for the bulk of underpayments under-payments disclosed-$1,215,626 disclosed-$1,215,626 million due 10,224 workers in minimum wage underpayments under-payments and $2,948,156 million due 12,625 workers work-ers in overtime underpayments. under-payments. The overall number of workers and the workers work-ers due back wages under separate provisions or acts may not agree because some employees were owed back wages under more than one provision or act. Over $307,700 of the total back wages was found due workers under the Davis-Bacon and related acts, the Service Contract Act, the Contract Con-tract Work Hours and Safety Standards Act, and the Walsh-Healey Public Contracts Act-all laws which set wage and hour standards that must be met for workers employed em-ployed by government contractors. Equal Pay Act and Age Discrimination in Employment Act violations viola-tions accounted for another $3,300 of the total wage underpayments or damages found owed to workers. Administration and enforcement of these two laws were transferred trans-ferred July 1, 1979 to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, whose enforcement results are not included inESA'sdata. As part of the Employers Em-ployers of Undocumented Workers Program (EUW), the Wage and Hour Division targets FLSA and other labor standards investigations at industries and localities local-ities where undocumented workers have traditionally tradition-ally beenemployed. The purpose of this program is to reduce the economic incentive for hiring undocumented workers, who tend to accept employment at less than the federal minimum wage. During fiscal 1980, employers in the region agreed to restore $651,714 in wage underpayments to 5,586 workers as a result of EUW activity. (These findings are included in-cluded in the overall FLSA enforcement data). Cold Facts "Where are the snows of yesterday?" asked an American writer named Justin McCarthy, echoing a question first raised several centuries earlier by the French poet Francois Villon. If McCarthy, who died in 1936, had only looked, he would have found the answer. Those snows-the big ones, anyway-are preserved in history and record books. The current, Christmas issue of National Wildlife magazine takes a look at those books and comes up with some cold facts concerning the most fearsome, frigid winters of yester-year: The lowest temperature tem-perature ever recorded in the U.S., according to the National Wildlife Federation's bimonthly, was minus 79.8 degrees F., at Prospect Creek, Alaska, on Jan. 23, 1971, "and the heaviest snowfall was 86 feet at Rainier Paradise Ranger Station during the same winter of 1970-71. That's about as deep as an eight-story building is tall. One of the earliest American blizzards tracked down by National Wildlife was in Feb., 1698. One New England pioneer called it "the terriblest winter ever" as Boston got buried under 42 inches of white stuff. And that was befor e the days of snow plows. Perhaps the grand-daddy grand-daddy of all blizzards was in March of 1888. From the Chesapeake Bay to Maine, for four days, an average of 40 inches of snow buried the region. Winds gusted up to 70 miles per hour, and there were more than 400 deaths--200 in New . York City alone. Train passengers were marooned and 200 ships foundered. One historic snowstorm came as a disguised blessing. At 6 p.m. on Christmas Day, 1776, a bitterly cold blizzard struck the East. General George Washington wrote in his diary: "The wind is northeast and beats in the faces of the men. It will be a terrible night for the soldiers who have no shoes. Some of them have tied old rags around their feet, but I have not heard a man complain." Later that night Washington crossed the Delaware with his shivering army of 2,400 men and slipped into Trenton, N.J. After a long night of Christmas revelry, the Hessian mercenaries were no match for the ragged Americans. "The Revolutionary War would not be won for five more years," says National Wildlife, "but the Battle of Trenton was a turning point. Had it not been for the cover of that snowstorm, it might have gone the other way." "i3Les Nurses Wr Newborns Hemrm HswTecUmnqmes An outreach program to teach techniques of newborn care to nurses in community settings is supported by a March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation grant to the University of Virginia Medical Center at Roanoke. Early diagnosis and appropriate follow-up care increase the chances for low-risk pregnancies and healthy newborns. new-borns. To reach this goal outside of university medical centers, it is necessary to build up staff expertise in small and medium-sized hospitals. In the Roanoke program, nurses are taught updated skills as well as how to use equipment available at their hospitals to achieve results similar to those at the regional center. After the workshops, nurses return to their hospitals and relay their newly acquired skills to other staff nurses. r I ; J ft, ' Si V-VJy ''ye- ' 5 JMJM i ; V. . UPS Approves Contract The Utah Public Service Ser-vice Commission has approved "and applauds" a contract between Utah Power & Light Co. and Phillips Petroleum that will lead to generation genera-tion of electricity from geothermal energy for the first time in Utah history. The. Utah commission com-mission noted in the order that UP&L "has shown an initiative in pursuing geothermal electricity generation that this commission com-mission applauds and encourages." LYNN COOK, right, shown a nurse how to examine a newborn to determine if the infant needs special attention. MmM&d tut! 1 LACI I1NG uifi mannequins is one icoy tliat Lynn Cook, tenter, a pennutul nurse clinician, trains nurses in basic and emergency skills for use in newborn nurseries. ' f 7 7 7 :! NURSES enrolled at the workshops are taught to test for and measure age and physical levels of infants in both newborn nursenes and newborn intensive care units. : " V ...,.. C,.. f "''"i : mm r rmmMtm'W'iSM PRACTICAL application is an essential element in the teaching process. Here nurses are taking various measurements of a newborn. In its order, the commission com-mission said the contract between UP&L and Phillips Phil-lips is consistent with national, state and the commission's policies in that it places greater em-, phasis on renewable resources and reduces the social and environmental environ-mental costs associated with nonrenewable energy resources. The contract calls for UP&L to plan and build a 20-megawatt power plant designed to use geothermal energy produced pro-duced by Phillips from the Roosevelt Hot Springs near Milford in southwestern south-western Utah. The initial plant is expected to be followed by additional 50-megawatt 50-megawatt geothermal units. UP&L said the initial unit is scheduled for completion late in 1983 or early in 1984. 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