Studies found ‘scary’ concentrations of metals in Great Salt Lake dust. Here’s what that means.

The research “doesn’t say the sky is falling and we’re all going to die,” said one scientist, but she added the dust is “a concern and it’s definitely worth continuing to look at.” The research “doesn’t say the sky is falling and we’re all going to die,” said Kerry Kelly, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Utah who worked on the first study.Utah’s Division of Air Quality points out the studies note there are differences between the research results and what a person experiences.

“You can plant lettuce and tomatoes in soil that has a lot of lead, and most of the time that lead doesn’t get into the plants,” he said. “What we’re really concerned about here is an increase in the rate of cancer in people who would be exposed to this over a long period,” he said. Because of this lack in PM10 monitoring, Perry said, researchers don’t know how much dust people are exposed to and how frequently they’re exposed to it.



The goal of these new instruments is to ensure “long-term monitoring of communities closest to the GSL so that we can better assess if PM10 is increasing and measure the composition of the making it to these communities,” the division’s statement added. The extraction using lower acidity represented the same kind of bioavailability testing in the first study, Fernandez said. The Great Salt Lake showed signs of improvement on Wednesday, April 12, 2023.

Near the outflow of the Weber River, where areas that used to be bone-dry just weeks earlier, the lakebed was covered with a few inches of water, which reduced dust. The state needs a larger, epidemiological study, Kelly said, looking at emergency room visits, asthma inhaler use and other health outcomes during dust events. There’s some limited evidence that dust tends to blow toward the northwest side of the Greater Salt Lake area, Kelly said, but there haven’t been a lot of measurements north of the city.

“We have interest in funding similar studies as well as helping quantify the health impacts of Utah dust, and are working to find the budgetary capacity to specifically address these concerns,” the division said. We have summarized this news so that you can read it quickly. If you are interested in the news, you can read the full text here.

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