John Macfarlane, a neurosurgeon and longtime Utah resident, has reared four children on the Wasatch Front. His first two kids grew up in Emigration Canyon, a Salt Lake City enclave out of the thick of the valley’s air pollution. His younger two grew up breathing the bad air valley air, with its wintertime inversions, and emissions from cars, oil refineries and gravel mines straddling Salt Lake and Davis counties.
Macfarlane’s two older children, now in their upper 20s, are healthy. His younger offspring, in their early 20s, both grew up with asthma and one was diagnosed with autism.