What are the potential health risks from airborne dust pollution, especially in the growing threat of climate change? This is what a recent study published in Scientific Reports hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how natural dust originating from the Great Basin in Utah—where the Great Salt Lake is drying up—mixes with human-made materials, resulting in airborne dust pollution that could be harmful to the local population. This study has the potential to help researchers, climate scientists, legislators, and the public better understand the risks of airborne dust pollution and the steps that can be taken to mitigate them.
“The problem is that there are lots of dust sources in the urban area, and when it’s windy and it’s picking up dust from Great Salt Lake and other places upstream, it gets mixed in with this local dust that has a lot more junk in it,” said Dr. Kevin Perry, who is a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah and a co-author on the study. “So, if we think about the contaminants of concern in Great Salt Lake dust, and then you add in additional contaminants from the local dust, it just makes it that much more potent, and not in a good way.”
Dust blowing in Salt Lake City in January 2025. (Credit: Jim Steenburgh, University of Utah)
For the study, the researchers analyzed 29 dust samples that were collected between 2020 and 2022 using a low-cost and low-tech method as part of the Dust Squared project. As the collectors trapped dust, the researchers would periodically collect the trapped dust with the goal of ascertaining their physical characteristics, including size, color, geochemical makeup, and mass flux. Through this, they could determine if the dust particles were natural or human-made.
In the end, the researchers found high levels of arsenic, cobalt, lead, copper, cadmium, molybdenum, calcium, and zinc, most of which originate from human-made processes like vehicles or mining. Additionally, the amount of cobalt and arsenic surpassed safety levels established by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“The dust in the city was way more contaminated with all sorts of metals and other sorts of things than the natural dust,” said Dr. Perry.
What new discoveries about airborne dust pollution will researchers make in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Scientific Reports, EurekAlert!, University of Utah
