You remember the ads from the 80s, right? “This is your brain [man holds up an egg]. This is ozone [he points to a hot skillet, cracks the egg into it, holds up the sizzling skillet]. This is your brain on ozone. Any questions?”
Right, it was drugs, not ozone. But a recent University of Utah study shows the same jarring imagery of a fried egg could apply to fetal brain development in places with higher-than-recommended levels of ozone – a colorless, unstable toxic gas with a pungent odor. Places known for oil drilling and production such Utah’s Wasatch Front and Uinta Basin and Colorado’s northern Front Range, where ozone levels have been deemed dangerously high.
The Utah study is entitled “Prenatal Ozone Exposure and Risk of Intellectual Disability in Children” and was published in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology.
While the U.S. Supreme Court considers an oil-train case pitting Eagle County, Colo., against seven rural counties in northeastern Utah – a case likely to reshape the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – missed in the shuffle has been the surging levels of ozone in the Uinta Basin as oil companies look to quadruple production in the area with the proposed new train.
Late last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officially rejected a request from Utah to declare the Uinta Basin has complied with ozone air quality standards. The EPA originally proposed to grant Utah’s request, which would have let the state off the hook on adopting additional clean air safeguards and further reducing ozone in the region.
Colorado has similarly struggled for years with ozone pollution. From a December story on Colorado Newsline: “Concentrations of ozone measured by Front Range monitoring stations exceeded EPA limits on 41 different days in 2024, according to data from the Regional Air Quality Council. That’s the highest number since 2021 and worse than all but two ozone seasons in the last 11 years.”
Newsline goes on to explain why that matters: “Ozone is a hazardous air pollutant formed by a chemical reaction between sunlight and certain so-called precursor pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. In addition to naturally-forming or ‘background’ ozone originating in other states and even overseas, local sources — more than enough to put a nine-county region in and around Denver chronically over the limit in the summer months — include emissions from cars and trucks, industrial facilities, and the oil and gas sector.”
That story by Newsline’s Chase Woodruff prompted a January opinion piece from Newsline Editor Quentin Young, who wrote, “Colorado gets credit for leading the way in many areas of environmental protection. But it consistently proves a failure in at least one respect: ozone pollution.” It ran under the headline, “Ozone keeps hurting Coloradans. Officials keep doing too little about it.” The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment is aware.
The Colorado Times Recorder in July confronted Colorado Jared Polis on the topic of harmful ozone pollution at a National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City, where he was taking the chairman’s baton from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, pressing Polis on the easterly flow of wind and weather from fossil-fuel-friendly Utah into Colorado. It was incredibly hot during the NGA meeting, and Polis was asked how he can “disagree better” – Cox’s NGA chairman mantra – when “Colorado is downwind from Utah and the two states have such radically different approaches on fossil fuel production and renewable energy.”
“Certainly, part of our argument about why we should have a waiver from the EPA ozone, non-attainment area is because much of the ozone in our air does drift in from other states,” Polis told CTR at the time, refusing to single out Utah and arguing he cooperates with all the states on climate change issues. “And that’s a number of states. It’s not just … it’s several states depending on the wind. So we don’t want to penalize Colorado consumers just because the wind is bringing in ozone from other states.”
RealVail.com has relentlessly reported on Eagle County’s legal efforts to derail the proposed Utah oil train expansion, highlighting Utah’s consistent noncompliance on ozone and other air pollution failures related to the huge drilling expansion right on the Colorado border.
In a recent email interview with Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental groups that joined Eagle County in suing to stop the Uinta Basin Railway, Nichols called such statements “total hot air from Polis.”
Nichols pointed to an April 2024 letter from Polis, Cox, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon, and Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs to former President Joe Biden citing the “spirit of cooperative federalism” in seeking “increased flexibility” on air-quality regulations while simultaneously expressing “alarm about the possible sanctioning of states that struggle to attain the standard.”
“If Colorado was really concerned about out-of-state pollution, they’d use the procedures under the Clean Air Act to compel EPA to do something about it,” Nichols said. “Instead, Polis is joining forces with Utah and Wyoming to try to derail any and all regulation of ozone in the western U.S. It’s shameful and disgusting to see what he signed Colorado onto.
“Polis’ views and the views in this letter are driven by pro-polluter politics, they don’t reflect a rational or legitimate assessment of the state of air quality and our understanding of the problem in Colorado and elsewhere, and it reflects an attempt to politicize clean air, which itself is a reflection of the fossil fuel industry’s influence of these state governments,” Nichols added.
Nichols is particularly incensed about this line from the letter: “There are exceedingly few remaining policies left for states to adopt.”
“This is outrageous,” Nichols said. “While I could list a thousand things that Utah and Wyoming have refused to do to curtail ozone and ozone-forming pollution (both states are actively crusading against EPA policies that would reduce ozone pollution), even Colorado has barely taken steps to truly address the issue in a comprehensive, statewide manner. There’s so much more the state could be doing, it’s beyond shameful that Polis would join in such misleading political theater.”
One reason for it may be the simple fact of Colorado’s own booming oil industry. Colorado in 2023 was the fourth-largest oil-producing state in the nation, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, accounting for 4% of the country’s all-time record year for oil production. But at the same time, Colorado’s electricity generation has shifted from 68% coal in 2010 to 32% in 2023, and electricity from renewable sources (mostly wind) jumped to 39%.
Colorado’s turn toward carbon-free electricity blows past the national average of 21% renewable power in 2023 and Utah’s below-average 19% renewable share in 2023 – something Polis deserves credit for. Utah – the nation’s ninth-largest oil-producing state – has a voluntary goal of generating 20% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025, and Polis ran on a platform and has developed an ambitious roadmap for achieving 100% renewable power by 2040.
But none of that changes the fact that Colorado’s northern Front Range, which Polis calls home, has a very unhealthy track record of ozone pollution driven by oil and gas production and automobile traffic. And now Polis, a Democrat who cited taking over the NGA chairmanship as one of his reasons for attending President Donald Trump’s inauguration, will likely have a much more compliant EPA to deal with as Trump and his allies are quickly taking actions to gut the EPA.
