This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative with funding from Love the Lake, an initiative of the non-profit Great Salt Lake Alliance. Editorial decisions are made independently by the Collaborative and partner newsrooms. This story was written by Will Ruzanski for the collaborative as part of a partnership between Amplify Utah and The Daily Utah Chronicle.
In July, dark clouds of orange and brown dust blew down the Wasatch Front, darkening skies and reducing visibility for over an hour. It wasn’t the first time a Great Salt Lake dust storm rolled through the valley this summer, and it’s probably not the last, experts say.
Dust from the Great Salt Lake’s exposed lakebed contains harmful pollutants like heavy metals, industrial mining runoff and residual pesticides, among other pollutants. When blown into the air, the dust can worsen air quality and pose serious risks to northern Utahns, especially the elderly, adolescents and those with pre-existing health conditions.
And as lake levels continue to drop — with over 55% of the lakebed exposed and water levels sitting at just 33% — researchers warn these dust storms are becoming more frequent.
The Chronicle spoke with University of Utah air quality researcher Kevin Perry and Bryce Bird, the director of Utah’s Division of Air Quality, to help Utahns prepare for these storms. Here’s what they had to say — and how the state is responding.
Identifying a storm
Great Salt Lake dust storms typically blow into the Salt Lake Valley from the North, Perry said, but Utah’s airborne dust pollution isn’t always from the lake. Most dust events in Utah contain sediment from multiple sources, he added, emphasizing “if you have plumes that are coming off the lake bed, then it’s pretty obviously Great Salt Lake dominated.”
There are two clues to help people understand whether they’re seeing dust, or smoke, Perry said. The first is strong winds. Smoke doesn’t need wind to carry it, Perry said, but dust does.
“The other thing is that it’s visually different from smoke,” Perry said. “Smoke tends to create a milky white haze that covers the entire sky, and dust plumes are a little bit darker, they tend not to be uniform over the entire valley.”
Bird recommends Utahns “trust your senses,” adding that any gritty feelings in the mouth paired with reduced visibility may indicate a dust storm.
He also referenced the state’s air quality tracking website, which is updated hourly and the UtahAir app, available for download on any mobile device. Both provide alerts for incoming dust storms when forecast data is available.
Another key distinction is the consistency of dust plumes. Perry said Great Salt Lake dust storms, which are more dangerous, appear patchier than storms from other sources like Sevier Lake or the West Desert.
Public health
Dust can impact our health in two ways, Perry said. The first is an “acute” response, which can happen when particulate levels are especially high.
“You have a big dust storm like we had [in July], and people end up in respiratory distress, people end up with strokes, with heart attacks, those sorts of things,” he said. “The people that are most impacted are people with asthma, people with [chronic obstructive pulmonary disease], people with pre-existing conditions … but at high concentrations, it can impact everybody, with the strongest impacts typically on the elderly and children.”
The second is chronic exposure, Perry said, warning long-term exposure to carcinogens in Great Salt Lake dust “can potentially lead to higher rates of certain types of cancer.”
A 2020 Brigham Young University study found that air pollution from various sources in Utah “causes between 2,500 and 8,000 premature deaths each year, decreasing Utahn’s median life expectancy by 1.1 to 3.6 years.” The study does not specifically mention Great Salt Lake dust.
Protecting your health
There are two primary ways Utahns can protect themselves from dust storms’ harmful effects, Perry said: staying inside and wearing an N95 mask while outside.
Most buildings have air filters in their heating and cooling systems that can remove dust and other contaminants in the air, he added, while an N95 mask can filter out 95% of airborne dust.
“The most important thing is to identify it, and then you can protect yourself,” Perry added. “Generally speaking, the [Great Salt Lake] dust events typically only last a few hours.”
Drier lake leads to more dust
Monitors have already been detecting airborne dust from the Great Salt Lake one to ten times per year, Bird said, which is about on par with dust from the West Desert and out of state sources. But he and Perry both said they expect more dust from the Great Salt Lake as levels continue dropping.
“We know right now we get one to ten instances a year where we have dust that we detect, at the current monitors, originated in the Great Salt Lake,” Bird said. “We also have about that same number from West Desert sources, and about that same number from out-of-state dust sources as well.”
Perry said he expects more Great Salt Lake dust storms this year, depending on how the pending monsoon season goes. Heavy rain could dampen the playa and help mitigate dust, he said. But “if we get thunderstorms that don’t generate a lot of precipitation, that’ll just generate a lot of dust.”
Utah’s monsoon season typically peaks in the last week of July through the first week of August, Perry said, but can vary depending on different climatic factors.
“We’ve had an exceptionally hot and dry year. We had really low snowpack last winter that just allowed things to start drying out much faster than normal,” he said. “Last year we got really big monsoons, it completely shut the dust down and we didn’t have any dust events in the fall at all. But this year, the lake is ready to blow. All it needs is wind.”
Experts need more data
Existing dust monitoring stations are stationed in population centers like Salt Lake City and don’t collect precise data on what kinds of pollutants are in the dust. Perry said the historical lack of information has posed a challenge to researchers and state officials.
“We don’t have direct data for a lot of the communities that we think are most heavily impacted,” he said. “We actually think that the hardest hit communities are those immediately northeast of Farmington Bay: Syracuse, Leighton, Clearfield, Farmington, Centerville…. those areas up there.”
To fill the void, the state is installing new monitors along the lake. By the end of July, the Division of Air Quality plans to have eight newly installed Great Salt Lake dust monitors. In the next five years, the division will have built more than 20 new monitors for the Great Salt Lake, Bird said.
The monitors will collect data in two different ways:, real time PM10 data — which Utahns can access on the state’s existing air quality website — and filter-based monitors, which collect samples for lab testing.
The goal is to install “monitors to be able to differentiate what is originating from the Great Salt Lake versus what’s being carried past the Great Salt Lake from dust events that originate in Nevada or in the West Desert,” Bird said.
Not “Dust Lake City”
Perry said additional data collection could help researchers offer better advice to state officials and people across northern Utah.
“There’s a lot of obvious concern from the public, and that concern I think is largely driven right now by lack of data,” he said. “Once we have data, then we can do a much better job of assessing the overall impact that the dust is likely having on the people who live along the Wasatch Front.”
But it’s also not helpful to overdramatize the problem, Perry said. The best thing we can do is be well-informed. .
“Some media go a little overboard. I’ve seen headlines… ‘Dust Lake City,’ and the city will become unlivable because of dust, and that’s simply not true,” he said. “The dust events are very short-lived, and with some knowledge, it’s fairly easy to protect yourself from the dust. But we have to have the data in place and the alert systems in place and educate the public on how they can do that.”
Regardless, Perry said he’s optimistic about Great Salt Lake conservation, emphasizing water overconsumption is the leading cause for declining levels — which Utahns can prevent.
“Climate change is responsible for about 10% of the loss over the last 40 years, drought is responsible for about a quarter of the water loss, but two-thirds to three-quarters of the water loss is associated with using the water for other purposes before it gets to the lake,” he said. “That means that if we change how we use our local water, we can actually save Great Salt Lake.”
