- [Lauren] Lying in the dry lake bed of the Great Salt Lake, a huge community problem.

- [Kevin] When the wind gets strong, it can create dust storms.

- [Lauren] Among the concerns- - It also has metals in it.

- [Lauren] Poor air quality and health.

- So things like influenza A, attacks of asthma and COPD.

- [Lauren] Who is most at risk?

A University of Utah research team may have the answer.

They've invented a tool to predict what's coming.

- We need to start thinking about dust as another form of severe weather.

- [Lauren] So how can we protect ourselves?

- Those individual actions do make a difference.

- And what's the state's plan moving forward?

Could it also involve a solution lying right here in the lake bed?

I'm Lauren Steinbrecher, and this is Utah Insight.

(bright music) Showing us his research gathering ritual that starts with unlocking gates and driving until the dirt road ends somewhere south of Syracuse, Utah, Kevin Perry loads up a mini trailer, his piece of a University of Utah research project requiring true dedication, considering it's done in sweltering temps not far below 100 degrees.

- Yes, I'm the one who gets to enjoy Mother Nature.

Are you ready for your adventure?

- [Lauren] Yeah.

The atmospheric sciences professor can only reach his open-air lab by bike, riding deep into the Great Salt Lake playa in an area once only reachable by boat.

This is Farmington Bay, but it's not really a bay right now.

- Farmington Bay is basically dried up with the exception of the Jordan River that flows through.

- [Lauren] Over the course of the last 30 plus years, the shrinking Great Salt Lake shoreline has turned bays into barren expanses.

Perry says the reason- - It's not being caused by drought.

It's not being caused by climate change.

It's being used by overuse of water.

We use 30% more water than what is sustainable for the lake.

- [Lauren] That overuse, he explains, has left 800 square miles of exposed lake bed littered with what he is now out here studying.

- We're standing in a dust hotspot, and you'll notice that this area right here is lighter in color, and you'll see how incredibly emissive and how easy it is to generate dust.

- [Lauren] Perry has painstakingly mapped out nearly 700 dust hotspots, with soil tests revealing cancer-causing carcinogens like arsenic in high concentrations.

Using a mobile wind machine Perry can measure the force it takes to kick dust into the air and toward our homes.

- And what we really need to answer the question is how much of that dust is making it to the surrounding communities.

- [Lauren] The state of Utah is working to figure that out.

- We know for a fact that the dust is bad for people, - [Lauren] But as great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed explains- - It's something that we have understudied, - [Lauren] Which is why his office put funding toward expanding dust monitoring.

- On how much dust is coming off the lake bed, what's in the dust, how frequently these dust events are happening, and all of those are very important questions.

- [Lauren] The Division of Air Quality plans to build new sites like this one in key areas with dust monitoring machines.

- We'll have instruments like this.

- [Lauren] DAQ manager Bo Call explains- - For the dust monitoring, we're looking at a couple of things, and one is where is the air coming from?

- [Lauren] They'll measure the amount of dust blowing around.

A lab will then test what's actually in it.

- And whether there is a concern or what the level of concern would be.

- [Lauren] Call says the monitors will also be able to provide realtime updates during dust storms.

- That's really about, can people do something?

Can they step inside?

Can they avoid it?

- [Lauren] But this plan will take time to execute.

So in the meantime, University of Utah professor Derek Mallia, takes on the next leg of the U of U research project, predicting the path of Great Salt Lake playa particulates, which involves hours and hours.

- Yeah, this is probably about 50% of my day.

- [Lauren] Creating countless lines of code.

- [Derek] Yeah, it's a lot of numbers.

- [Lauren] He's transforming current DAQ measurements plus all the data from Kevin Perry's hotspot studies into this dust modeling map.

- Well, that basically says how much dust will come off of the great Salt Lake if these surfaces are covered or uncovered by water.

- Mallia is hoping to expand the model saying it could show how dust impacts the speed of snow melt on the mountains or how it affects crop growth in agriculture, and it could be used to warn the public when a dust storm is on the horizon.

- [Kevin] Kind of like how you would forecast like a hurricane or floods, or even a wildfire.

- [Lauren] Almost like radar for dust.

- Yeah, in theory, we can make forecasts out to anywhere from 24 to maybe even 36 hours.

- [Lauren] If this is our new severe weather reality, how do we stay safe?

- A lot of people don't realize just how much they're being impacted.

- [Lauren] Says Mallory Diaz Vela with Utah Clean Air Partnership, or Ucair.

She explains simply staying inside during a dust storm, or when air quality is poor in general, isn't enough to protect our health.

- Sometimes the air quality inside your home is worse than outside.

- I can imagine that it's coming in and it doesn't have anywhere to circulate.

- Exactly.

- She suggests investing in an air purifier.

(air purifier chiming) Or, for a cost conscious option- - [Mallory] This is like your typical 20 by 20 filter that you can get at the home goods store that- - [Lauren] Diazvela showed me how to build a homemade purifier.

- [Mallory] This one has special clips, but you can also get clips from Amazon.

- [Lauren] By attaching an air filter to a box fan.

- Clip it on.

- Easy and effective.

- [Mallory] So at least having one of these running in a room where you're spending most of your time, so your home office, your bedroom at night when you're sleeping will help keep you protected from those dust particles.

- [Lauren] That advice especially important.

- Tooele and Salt Lake County have the highest levels of PM 10.

- [Lauren] In Sara Grineski's portion of the U of U dust research.

- And so as a sociologist, I look at the people side of things.

- [Lauren] The professor used Derek Mallia's dust model.

- This is just kind of a map of that.

- To figure out- - Where does the dust go and who does the dust impact?

- [Lauren] Laying out all the census data.

- [Sara] These are all the population-weighted mean exposures.

- [Lauren] Anyone else might get lost in all the stats.

- It involves initially some spatial analysis and then we also calculate these absolute disparity metrics.

- What she sees- - A pretty clear story.

- [Lauren] Is simple.

- Yeah, it's actually been pretty straightforward.

- [Lauren] That story, when breaking down demographics, Grineski found dust exposure disproportionately impacts socially marginalized communities.

- And we found that here in the Wasatch Front, people who are Pacific Islander had the highest levels of exposure to dust of any of the racial ethnic groups here locally.

We found that Hispanic Latino people had the second highest.

- [Lauren] In addition to race and ethnicity, Grineski looked at socioeconomic factors like education level.

- People who didn't have a high school diploma also had disproportionately high levels of dust.

And then also people who don't have health insurance.

- Why is that?

Grineski says it means the dust is blowing toward where those groups live, which she says goes back to where different populations have historically settled, like here on the northwest side of the Salt Lake Valley.

She says the dust model shows those disparities only getting worse the lower the lake drops.

- The next step is to try to calculate or estimate healthcare costs associated with the dust.

- [Lauren] Paying close attention to the U of U team's research.

- I mean, I think all of us are concerned.

- [Lauren] Commissioner Steed.

- [Brian] I think now we're starting to see that a unhealthy lake actually does have direct consequences to you and to your family and to your business.

- His office's goal is to replenish the lake, and they recently received $50 million in federal funds to go toward water efficiency projects, habitat recovery programs, and incentives for water rights owners.

It's meant as a good measure, but he explains not a total fix.

- [Brian] In reality, we have a long-term problem.

- [Lauren] Steed is urging everyone to take action to help turn the lake around.

- We need to make sure that we understand that the lake's in trouble and the best way we can resolve that problem we've got is for all of us to use less water - [Lauren] Back out on the playa, in his open-air lab, Perry is taking steps of his own, running new tests for the Department of Natural Resources.

- [Kevin] We're trying to come up with ideas on how we can reduce the dust coming from the lake bed.

We have to understand what our options are.

- [Lauren] One possibility, build a system to water the dirt.

- Yeah, we're trying to figure out if we should use fresh water or we should use salt water.

There's actually fresh water beneath Great Salt Lake that you could actually tap into.

- [Lauren] Though the true solution he sees, a huge community effort - [Kevin] Saving Great Salt Lake is within our power.

- [Lauren] Tackling water, dust, and the dying Great Salt Lake together.

- This is no longer really a scientific problem.

This is a cultural problem.

This is a will of the people problem.

If we want to save the lake, then we have to alter how we use water and our relationship with water.

But it is solvable, and it is something that we can do.

(bright music) (upbeat music)