Yvette Shen Shows SLC Air Quality Has Improved

Communication Assistant Professor and award-winning designer, Yvette Shen, created this awesome scrolling interactive to show how—contrary to public opinion—Salt Lake City's air quality has actually improved over the last 35 years.

Using the Air Quality Index (as developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency), her piece, Air of Salt Lake City, color-codes daily and yearly air quality right back to 1980. With her visuals, it becomes clear that big improvements to air quality were made between 1980 and 1997, after which point it has remained at a roughly constant level.

Shen's scrolling interactive is complemented by radial charts revealing the change in composition of five major air pollutants and summary area charts.