Dust from the Great Salt Lake has outsized impact on disadvantaged communities, study says

The shores of the Great Salt Lake near Syracuse, with Antelope Island in the background, are pictured on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

When wind kicks up toxic dust from the dry lakebed of the shrinking Great Salt Lake, it has an outsized impact on disadvantaged communities along the Wasatch Front, according to new research from the University of Utah.

Currently about 800 square miles of lakebed is exposed, with decades of drought taking its toll on the Great Salt Lake. The dry lakebed contains arsenic and other metals, which researchers believe is both naturally occurring and a result of pollution, and can lead to cardiovascular disease and asthma.

Now, in a report published in the journal One Earth in June, researchers found some of Salt Lake City’s low income neighborhoods are situated in the path of dust that blows off the lake.

That pollution has a disproportionate impact among Pacific Islanders and Hispanics, according to researchers.

And the more lake levels decline, the more these neighborhoods will be impacted, the study found.

“People here in Utah are concerned about the lake for a variety of reasons — the ski industry, the brine shrimp, the migratory birds, recreation — and this study adds environmental justice and the equity implications of the drying lake to the conversation,” said Sara Grineski, lead author of the study and a professor of sociology and environmental studies at the University of Utah.

Grineski and other researchers simulated dust emissions during significant wind events in April 2022. Derek Mallia, a research assistant professor of atmospheric sciences, created a model to simulate how those wind events would impact Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties based on differing lake levels.

“We have to use weather models, since we cannot physically go out to the lake and remove/add water to see how much more/less dust it would emit,” said Mallia in a news release. “Models like the one that I developed let us run these hypothetical scenarios.”

The models show that in scenarios where the lake is at its current levels or lower, Pacific Islander communities are most impacted by dust. According to the study, they are the only group exposed to air pollution levels that exceed certain U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

Although less so, Black, Hispanic and Native American residents are also highly impacted. Asian and white residents are the least affected, per the models.

The study also shows a discrepancy between education, with Utahns without a high school diploma more likely to be exposed to higher, more dangerous, levels of dust. Renters are also more vulnerable to pollution than homeowners, as are people who make less than $50,000 a year.

In scenarios where the lake is at healthy levels, the discrepancy goes down. Though residents could still be impacted by dust, pollution levels are more uniform, regardless of ethnicity, education or income.

“If we can take better care of the lake, the dust for everyone goes down and the gap in exposure between these groups goes down too,” Grineski said.

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