Reactive dust from Great Salt Lake may have health consequences

Dust pollution is known to make contributions to asthma and heart and lung disease. But dust blowing from Utah’s Great Salt Lake may per chance percent an additional unwanted punch.

Metals in the dust and sediment from around Great Salt Lake are more reactive than dust from nearby lake beds, researchers report in the November Atmospheric Environment. When inhaled, the dust has the you may manage to to lead to inflammation, though the genuine impacts to people in the realm would require as well learn about.

The Great Salt Lake has been steadily shrinking as drought, climate change and consumption take away water faster than which is going to be replenished, leaving over 1,900 square kilometers of the lake bed exposed (SN: four/17/23). Because the lake dries out, it leaves on the back of dust laden with metals, minerals and sediment that had been carried into the lake from upstream.

To higher keep in mind the fact that the dust’s composition, chemical engineer Kerry Kelly and colleagues aerosolized samples collected from around the lake. Then they filtered out any dust particles wider than 10 micrometers, leaving best the dust particles sufficiently small to inhale.

Analysis of the inhalable particles revealed a few metals — including manganese, copper, iron and lead — at higher concentrations than dust from other nearby playas. Lithium and arsenic were also present at levels exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional screening levels, a reference point for as well risk evaluation.

The team also found that the oxidative potential of the Great Salt Lake dust, which indicates how likely the dust is to generate reactive oxygen species, is in most cases higher than that of dust from other nearby lakes. Reactive oxygen species are unstable molecules containing oxygen which have interaction with — and barely damage — molecules in living cells.

“Our body has all forms of antioxidants,” says Kelly, of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. These compounds allow us to breathe in and manage reactive oxygen species — to a degree. “On the choice hand, if we get too a lot of those reactive particles or reactive species that enter our lungs, or not it really is going to lead to an imbalance. Then that can turn out in inflammation, after which inflammation ends up in a sort of adverse health effects.”

But experts advise against jumping to conclusions. “I believe it’s fine to learn about environmental components, and to learn about their potential for having this or that effect,” says David Lo, a biomedical scientist on the University of California, Riverside. “But then you ask on the same side, is there any evidence that individuals are actually being harmed?” Correlating exposure to highly oxidative dust with specific public health outcomes would require more data on the extent of exposure and studies linking oxidative potential to specific health concerns, he says.

Kelly has the same opinion. “I don’t say, ‘The sky is falling, we’re all going to die.’” Rather, she says, the learn about “shows that the dust from the Great Salt Lake is potentially a significant health concern, so we do more work.” Utah has funding for equipment to measure the extent to which dust from Great Salt Lake blows into nearby cities, she says, alternatively it hasn’t been deployed.

“We also get more water back in the Great Salt Lake,” Kelly says, “because which is indubitably the solution.”