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John Hollenhorst ReportingOn a windy day like today, especially later in the summer, there can be lots of dust around the Great Salt Lake. Depending on where you live, a lot of it can wind up in your lungs, and over the last couple of years, scientists have been trying to figure out exactly what you're breathing.
The lake shrunk dramatically during the drought years, exposing and drying out 70,000 acres of old lakebed that often generates significant dust. We know the lake has some nasty stuff in it. Is the dust nasty too? Preliminary answers are inconclusive.
Numerous times over the last two summers, Bruce Allen hauled his air sampling equipment around the fringes of the Great Salt Lake. The lake has started rising again, but it's still way down from historic highs. There are plenty of mudflats that turn into dust in summer heat. That mud presumably contains toxic pollutants.
Bruce Allen, Utah Division of Air Quality: "Selenium and mercury and heavy metals that may be in the Great Salt Lake. It's a sink, basically, for much of the runoff from the Wasatch Front."
But Allen was surprised by what he didn't find in his dust sampler filters.
Bruce Allen: "I expected to find mercury, I expected to find some other heavy metals that I didn't necessarily crop up in the analysis."
One theory is that the method of sampling just didn't work. Perhaps the toxic mercury evaporated off the filters. The sampling did find small particle pollution worse than federal health standards on the dustiest days at Saltair.
That's a potential health hazard. Small particles can damage lungs.
There were also significant levels of several natural constituents: sulfur, chloride, potassium, iron and strontium. It's not clear if that's a health concern.
Bruce Allen: "We don't have enough information. The jury's still out at this point, to know."
One thing they learned is how hard it is to get sampling equipment in the right place at the right time. Wind and dust are notoriously unpredictable, but state officials believe the health questions are substantial enough they want more studies and better answers.
