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Only about 8,000 people live in Schoolcraft County on the northern shores of Lake Michigan. But the bucolic character of this Upper Peninsula county, like nearby Door County in Wisconsin, belies a big-city smog problem. According to a recent report by the American Lung Association, Schoolcraft and other rural lakeside counties have some of the worst air pollution in the region as ozone drifts northward from the Milwaukee and Chicago metropolitan areas.

Schoolcraft is one of four Upper Peninsula counties bordering Lake Michigan. It has a single population center, the City of Manistique, and some farming but many more acres of undeveloped wetlands and forest, including large portions of the Seney National Wildlife Refuge and the Hiawatha National Refuge. Despite all this green space and a relative lack of industry, this rustic Michigan province had more “ozone alert” days between 2007 and 2009 than Milwaukee County, according to the ALA.

(photo by Adrian Palomo)

Per U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards, there were 15 “orange alert” days in Schoolcraft during that period and just 11 in Milwaukee County. Orange alerts signify dangerous smog conditions for at-risk populations, such as young children, the elderly, asthmatics or people with other lung conditions. More rare are “red alert” days; none were reported in Wisconsin or in Schoolcraft County between 2007 and 2009.

Schoolcraft is unique: It’s the only Upper Peninsula county bordering Lake Michigan that collects air quality data for the EPA. Its findings are evidence that the high ozone levels that plague Wisconsin’s lakefront counties extends even to the Upper Peninsula’s lakefront.

Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources has long attributed high ozone levels in Door County and bordering Kewaunee County to smog carried northward by air currents from Southeastern Wisconsin, Chicago and even northern Indiana. There were 23 orange alerts in Door County between 2007 and 2009, second only the Sheboygan County, another persistently smoggy region, which had 24. Kewaunee had 16 orange alerts. Other lakefront counties with high ozone levels include Manitowoc, Ozaukee, Racine and Kenosha.

Dona Wininsky, director of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Lung Association, says the assumption that ozone is ferried as far north as remote Schoolcraft County “would be a reasonably intelligent conclusion.” Ozone is a chemical compound composed of three oxygen atoms (instead of two as in the air we normally breathe). It forms on hot, sunny days from chemicals released by vehicle exhaust, coal-burning power plants and industrial sources.

“It’s like a chemical soup. You need heat, sunlight, nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds,” Wininsky says. The “volatile organic compounds,” essential to creating ozone, are produced when fossil fuels are burned and when some chemicals evaporate.

Ozone inflames the lungs, thus posing a hazard for people who work or exercise outside, people with asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema and people who are especially old or young, according to the ALA.

Long-term exposure to smog has been linked to impaired lung function in adults or slow development in children. “The lungs are the last organ to develop. They actually don’t fully develop until age 12,” says Wininsky.

The attendant inflammation causes shortness of breath, chest pain, wheezing, coughing and increases the risk of developing a respiratory infection.

Particle pollution, sometimes called “soot,” was highest in Brown, Dane and Milwaukee counties between 2007 and 2009. Brown County, home to Green Bay, had the most orange alerts, 17, compared to 16 in Dane and 12 in Milwaukee, which also had a red alert during the period.

The Green Bay and the Madison-Baraboo areas gained the dubious distinction of placing 23rd and 24th, respectively, on the ALA’s ranking of “the top 25 cities most polluted by short-term particle pollution.”

The effects of particle pollution are similar to those for ozone, although the particles can pose an additional risk to heart disease patients. The particles – chemicals and other compounds thrown off by combustion or other processes – are so small they can bypass the lung’s natural defenses (tiny “cilia” hairs that catch larger particles) and enter the bloodstream.

Such pollution tends to stay closer to home; it’s not even measured in Door, Kewaunee and Schoolcraft counties.

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