Air pollution trapped by winter inversions along Utah’s Wasatch Front is estimated to send more than 200 people to the emergency room with pneumonia each year, according to a study by University of Utah Health and Intermountain Healthcare.

“When exposed to elevated levels of particulate pollution, older adults are more likely to get pneumonia, be hospitalized with severe pneumonia and also die from pneumonia in the hospital,” says the study’s lead author Cheryl Pirozzi, MD, a pulmonologist and assistant professor of Internal Medicine at University of Utah Health. The research findings were published online in the Annals of the American Thoracic Society.

Improving air quality would not only keep people out of the hospital, the investigation reports, but would also save up to $1.6 million in health care costs along the Wasatch Front each year.

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