The Great Salt Lake Is Still Drying Up. Will It Affect Your Health? Yes.
Utah’s Salt Lake City is notably one of the biggest outdoor hubs in the country. It offers easy access to climbing and hundreds of miles of hiking and mountain biking trails in the Wasatch mountains, which sit northeast of the state’s capital. In the winter months, tourists and locals make their way to iconic nearby ski areas like Park City, Alta, and Snowbird. Despite the town’s laundry list of recreational activities, Salt Lake also happens to be situated next to an impending environmental and public health disaster: the ever-shrinking Great Salt Lake.
Nick Merrill, a resident of American Fork, a city that lies a little over 30 miles south of Salt Lake, tells the story of how a dust storm, not uncommon in this region, recently ruined a night out with his wife. Around Christmastime, they drove to see Jack Antonoff’s band Bleachers at the Great Saltair. During their commute, he recalls that they chatted about pollution along the shores of the Great Salt Lake.
Merrill, who calls himself “slightly more outdoorsy than most” people in Utah, says the show was incredible but noted that a dust storm started brewing about an hour after the band started playing. “The wind picked up, and the band played on as best they could,” he says. “But eventually, the dust blowing over the crowd became so thick and choking that people ran from the concert to their cars, and the band was pulled from the stage before they could finish their set.”
Merrill says this particularly frenzied storm was a wake-up call. “During the strongest wind, I had to turn my back and get on the ground to protect my face,” he says.
As the lake continues to wane, the lakebed gets drier, creating more dust that can be carried in wind gusts. Some experts believe there’s a link between the amount of dry lakebed exposed and the frequency of dust storms. It’s even estimated that the Great Salt Lake triggers approximately 15 in a given year. Because dust storms weren’t all that common in this area about a decade and a half ago, this statistic is quite alarming.
Environmental researchers are, understandably, concerned about how shrinkage-related events, like the one that befell Merrill and his family and Salt Lake’s worsening smog, relate to climate change. Here’s what scientists say all of this means for people who visit and recreate near Great Salt Lake—and those who call Salt Lake home.
Great Salt Lake’s Drying Lakebed Is Emitting Tons (Literally) of Greenhouse Gasses
New research published this month in the sustainability-focused journal One Earth found that the drying Great Salt Lake has become a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. When a body of water shrinks, the lakebed underneath gets exposed. The resulting dried sediment then releases greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—all of which trap heat and feed global warming.
Between 1986 and 2021, the Great Salt Lake shrunk by more than two-thirds, dropping from 3,300 square miles to just 950. (In fact, it’s predicted that the lake will completely dry up by the year 2030 if conservation efforts are not implemented. Water diversions from farmers, residential growth—approximately 1.2 million people live in Salt Lake—and climate change are to blame for the dwindling lake, as Outside previously reported.
In the study, researchers sampled emissions from the dried saline lakebed over a seven-month period in 2020. They found that the lakebed emitted around 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide. The result? A seven-percent increase in the amount of human-caused emissions from Utah. To paint a clearer picture—with the help of the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions converter—4.1 million tons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions from over 800,000 gas-fueled cars.
“The lake is disappearing very quickly, and a lot of people are starting to wake up to it,” says study co-author Soren Brothers, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto.
The carbon dioxide emissions will have a global impact, Brothers says. It can also interfere with any greenhouse gas reductions the area attempts to achieve. “If Salt Lake City is doing a bunch of measures to try to reduce their carbon footprint and they slash emissions by ten percent but don’t take care of the lake, they could totally undo that work—and ultimately not have any gains,” Brothers says. (Those measures include using more renewable energy and designing more energy-efficient buildings.)
Greenhouse gas emissions are “not directly harmful to health,” says Lisa Welp, associate professor of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences at Purdue University. “But they contribute to climate change, which indirectly affects people worldwide,” Welp says.
The Great Salt Lake’s Decreasing Water Level Is a Public Health Threat
Salt Lake residents have long endured smoggy summers and winters. Pollution from motor vehicles and industry contributes to smog in the area, along with temperature inversions, which trap cold air and pollution underneath a blanket of warm air.
Piled on top of already-poor air quality, dust storms kick up particulate matter and send it airborne. Toxic bacteria in the lakebed is another health threat.
Dust Storms Wreak Havoc on Already-Bad Air Quality and May Trigger Respiratory Issues
Dust storms happen in the area for a few reasons, including the drying lakebed and strong winds from storm fronts. Illegal motor vehicles riding on the lakebed biocrust (this crust helps protect the lakebed from breaking when it’s intact) can also throw around dust.
When people inhale dust from the lakebed, it sparks inflammation in the body, leading to health issues, including trouble breathing, says Dr. Brian Moench, founder and president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment.
But there may be pollutants in that dust, says John C. Lin, associate director of the Wilkes Center for Climate Science and Policy at the University of Utah. “It’s still being studied, but there has been concern about what, exactly, is in that dust,” he says.
The dried lakebed can contain “dozens of heavy metals, including the worst of the worst—mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium, and a handful of radioactive isotopes like strontium, uranium, and cesium,” Dr. Moench says. However, it’s unclear how many toxins actually end up in the dust that blows around during storms.
Regardless of what’s in it, the dust can lead to short-term health effects like coughing, Lin says. “If you have asthma, it could trigger asthma symptoms, like wheezing,” he says. Over time and with continuous exposure, people may experience decreased lung function, cardiovascular issues, and problems with lung development. “The concern is that it could affect children more because they’re still developing,” Lin says.
“From living there for several years, from 2017 to 2021…the air quality was not good,” Brothers says. (Wildfires in the area also don’t help, he says.) Being regularly exposed to dust and air pollution could raise the risk of lung disease, heart disease, and even neurodegenerative diseases—like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease—too, Dr. Moench says.
Dr. Moench says the situation around the lake has gotten so bad that he may need to move away for health reasons. “I wrestle all the time with whether I can afford to stay here for my own health,” he says. “I have a serious medical problem very likely related to—certainly exacerbated by—air pollution. Unfortunately, I think it won’t be long before my wife finally agrees that we have to move to protect ourselves.”
Exposure to Toxic Bacteria From the Lakebed Can Make You Feel Like You Have the Flu
While the dust storms are a big issue, there are also cyanotoxins—toxic compounds produced by cyanobacteria or blue-green algae—in the lake itself, too, Brothers says. Although the lakebed’s protective crust largely keeps them contained, cyanotoxins lingering around from old algal blooms can sneak into the lakebed.
“If those [cyanotoxins] go into the sediment and get disturbed, that could have a short- and long-term toxic impact,” he says. Activities that disturb the lakebed, including illegal motor vehicle traffic, foot traffic, and drier conditions, can jostle toxins around, Brothers says.
According to a 2023 research study published in the peer-reviewed toxinology journal Toxins, windy conditions can drive lake cyanotoxins airborne and lead to a number of health issues. Symptoms such as sneezing, nasal congestion, a runny nose, skin irritation, burning eyes, and respiratory problems are common, per a 2022 journal study.
Does All of This Mean That Great Salt Lake Is Unsafe For Outdoor Activities?
The American Lung Association notes that Salt Lake City ranks among the nation’s most polluted cities for ozone and short-term particle pollution, making the air quality less than ideal. Dr. Moench says this can make it hard for outdoor athletes to hike, bike, or do anything strenuous, particularly if they have underlying lung conditions.
Despite this, researchers stopped short of saying that people shouldn’t recreate or live around the lake. “It’s not to the point where I would tell people to avoid the Great Salt Lake, but this is definitely going to have an impact,” Brothers says.
The more dangerous dust storms typically occur when cold fronts, weather events that cause cold air to collide with warm air, move through the Wasatch Front. “You have to check for weather forecasts, as well as air quality forecasts before you go,” Lin says. (You can enter your zip code on AirNow to determine your town’s air quality status.)
Welp also says people shouldn’t avoid visiting the area over health concerns. “I wouldn’t not visit because of these effects,” she says. “But I would stay inside during dust storms and enjoy the outdoors responsibly.”
Dr. Moench agrees that short-term visitors to the lake are less likely to be impacted than long-term residents. Still, he recommends following certain precautions. “Bring an N95 mask in case there is a dust storm or other pollution event,” he says. Expectant mothers may also want to reconsider taking a trip to the area if air pollution levels are high or dust storms are likely, Dr. Moench says.
To lower your own impact on the future health of people around the lake, Lin stresses the importance of staying on marked surfaces and paths. “The dry lake soil bed develops a biocrust on it,” he says.
That biocrust is hard and helps contain the dust below, Dr. Moench explains. “That protective crust can help reduce some of that dust storm effect, but when people recreate on the surface of that crust, it can damage it,” he says.
Merrill says he continues to be concerned about how the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake will affect the area—and his loved ones. He says, “The impact that it can have on my family’s health and our quality of life is very, very real.
The post The Great Salt Lake Is Still Drying Up. Will It Affect Your Health? Yes. appeared first on Outside Online.
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