Rangers No Longer Getting Sick In Yellowstone; Watchdog Groups Applaud Park's Improving Health Under Snowmobile Phase-out

2/4/2004

From: Michael Scott of the The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, 406-581-7963, Alexandra Gorman of Womens Voices for the Earth, 406-543-3747, Noreen Campbell, Yellowstone visitor, 302-892-1800

YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Feb. 4 -- For the first time in many years, National Park Service rangers and entrance workers in Yellowstone National Park are not getting sick from breathing the park's wintertime air. Today, conservation and public health organizations applauded the improvement.

"We are seeing health benefits from the snowmobile phase-out underway in Yellowstone that both the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency predicted," said Michael Scott, executive director of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. "Americans visiting Yellowstone this winter are breathing less carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and benzene than in past winters. More importantly, they can look forward to truly healthy air in our first national park next winter when the snowmobile phaseout is complete."

In recent years, Yellowstone employees suffered headaches, nausea, sore throats, and watering eyes as they worked in a haze of snowmobile exhaust. The health hazards forced the National Park Service to pump fresh air into entrance booths. When workers continued to get sick, the Park Service issued respirators. So far this winter, the Park Service reports that none of its employees have gotten sick from breathing snowmobile exhaust.

"There is a very noticeable improvement in the air quality. In my previous visits, you could smell the fuel and you just knew it wasn't healthy," said Noreen Campbell of Newark, Delaware, who visited Yellowstone over the New Year's holiday. "This time, it wasn't objectionable. There wasn't any odor. I think the key point is that this situation in Yellowstone has been studied and we have data. We know if this phase-out of snowmobile use is reversed, we'll go right back to health problems for people and the environment. We know this, so I hope that doesn't happen."

Despite the improvements in human health under the phase-out, the snowmobile industry is fighting for a return to unregulated snowmobile use in Yellowstone or for implementation of a Bush Administration decision to expand snowmobile use in the park to as many as 950 snowmobiles a day. A federal judge blocked the Bush decision in December, ruling that the administration's studies demonstrated that it would fail to uphold the conservation mandate of the National Park Service.

In a $2.4 million study, the Bush Administration concluded that even with new four-stroke snowmobiles, its preferred plan to continue snowmobile use in Yellowstone would cause twice as much carbon monoxide as a transition to snowcoaches. The study also concluded that continued snowmobile use would cause adverse health effects for "employees and visitors who are susceptible to respiratory problems." The EPA later warned that the Administration had underestimated pollution levels that would result from continued snowmobile use, and agreed with a National Park Service conclusion that a phase-out of snowmobile use (now underway) would provide the strongest protection for public health.

"The transition from snowmobiles to snowcoaches is making Yellowstone a safer wintertime destination for all Americans, especially vulnerable visitors such as pregnant women, seniors, people with asthma, and those with heart conditions," said Alexandra Gorman, director of Science and Research for Women's Voices for the Earth, a public health advocacy organization based in Missoula, Mont. "All the studies by the National Park Service, the EPA, and scientists at various universities demonstrated that phasing out snowmobile use in Yellowstone is necessary to reduce hazardous levels of pollution. It's important that this is happening. Who can argue that Yellowstone shouldn't be a safe and healthy place for everyone to visit?"