America’s biggest salt water lake sparks health concerns as experts find ‘scary’ levels of ‘toxic dust’

The largest saltwater lake in the US is drying up, sparking health fears as a “scary” level of “toxic dust” spreads through Utah.

Two recent studies have suggested that dangerous levels of toxic dust are spreading in the Salt Lake Valley as water levels in Great Salt Lake continue to rise and fall. The Salt Lake Tribune.

“What we’re really concerned about here is an increase in cancer rates in people who are exposed to this over a long period of time,” University of Utah professor Kevin Perry told The Tribune.

While the study “doesn’t say the sky is falling and we’re all going to die,” it does show “concern,” said University of Utah professor Kerry Kelly.

“It’s definitely worth continuing to watch,” she told The Tribune.

The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, meaning it receives runoff from a watershed in Northern Utah and three other states. The only way the water can leave the lake is through evaporation.

The studies found that there is a “scary” amount of arsenic and other chemicals in the dust coming from the lake that millions of residents breathe, according to The Tribune.

One of the studies suggests that the dust coming from the lake is more dangerous than other dust flying around the Valley and could have a dangerous effect on health, despite the government saying levels are fine.

But research samples taken from the Weber River – which flows into the Great Lake – suggested there are harmful levels of toxins in the sediment.

However, the Utah Department of Air Quality said the level of settled dust may be different than what someone inhales, and their analysis of PM10 dust samples — which are smaller than a human hair — showed no increase in severity, according to The Tribune.

But Kelly, Perry and fellow Utah professor Diego Fernandez believe more research needs to be done, and quickly.

“We really need to think about how best to create a sampling network that can capture all of these dust events so that we can know how often they occur and how serious they actually are,” Perry, known as “Dr. Dust,” the outlet shared.

“What we’re really concerned about here is an increase in cancer rates in people who are exposed to this over a long period of time,” said Professor Kevin Perry of the University of Utah. Diego Fernandez believes more studies need to be done to find out the true extent of the toxicity

While the study “doesn’t say the sky is falling and we’re all going to die,” it does show “concern,” said University of Utah professor Kerry Kelly. “It’s definitely worth continuing to watch,” she said

The Great Salt Lake is an emerging source of dust, Perry said, and his latest research has found that the sediments in the dust can become more bioavailable and potentially more harmful when inhaled, especially during a dust storm.

“We need to know the concentrations that people are actually breathing to know whether they are harmful or not,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have that information,” he said.

Part of the reason scientists don’t have access to that information is because there are no monitoring systems to track PM10 particles, which is mainly the big lake.

Despite the Department of Air Quality allocating $275,000 for five new monitors, none have been installed, according to The Tribune.

The government agency is in the process of deploying the monitoring systems near large populated areas, but they “do not have monitors that most commonly capture dust from the Great Salt Lake,” a spokesperson told The Tribune.

The second study found similar results to Perry’s and looked for concentrations of copper, thallium, arsenic, mercury, lead and zinc, all of which can be toxic in high concentrations.

Cooper remained elevated compared to previous studies. According to The Tribune, arsenic was also “significantly higher” in areas of Gilbert Bay west of Antelope Island.

Thallium was also elevated, and lead and zinc were elevated in some areas.

Scientists believe the best way to combat the toxic dust is to keep the lake filled with water to keep the sediment buried.

They also believe they “need samplers from where the dust is going, like Syracuse and Ogden and Layton,” Perry said.

And Fernandez insists more research needs to be done to know the true length of the poison and how it will affect residents in the long term.