Toxic Salton Sea dust triggers changes in lung microbiome after just one week (phys.org)

Not surprising. I have a friend who grew up in El Centro and had asthma his whole childhood. Shortly after moving, he never had respiratory issues.

No wonder the lake is drying up with so much irrigation for agriculture, and an absurd number of golf courses in a very small area.

https://www.google.ca/maps/@33.6867973,-116.2608676,25994m

It's clear to me as an outsider that California has serious water sustainability problems. I mean, how long can this last?

This makes me incredibly concerned for the great salt lake

I watched a documentary a while back on the Salton Sea. It touched on the local residents that live in the area and how the dust affected the children. There were even plans of tapping into Mexico’s Laguna Salada to help keep the Salton Sea from drying up.

Although it’s not a natural sea and its full of chemicals from agricultural run off the residents that live in the area are suffering from the dust and fears of great dust clouds plumbing and going west to San Diego were also insensitives from keeping the hazardous Salton Sea from drying up.

Beautiful place to visit…just not during summer when it smells from all the Dead Sea life.

Toxic Salton Sea dust triggers changes in MICE lung microbiome after just one week.

I really wish this would be included in the headline in such stories.

Is there a repository somewhere that measures the number of studies on mice that go on to successful human trials or verification.

With the prominence of studies on mice, I think most humans trials Started on mice.

researchers note: burning man provides an annual cohort of ethically sourced samples

Salt Lake City is also at risk of this happening with the Great Salt Lake if it continues to shrink and dry up.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/us/utah-great-salt-lake-dust-...

I wonder if there’s some way of terraforming the area so trees can grow? There has to be some combination of soil amendments and plant species that can thrive in that environment?

Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea narrated by John Waters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjGAWxL23c

I watched this 20 years ago. It's a really interesting and funny documentary about the Salton Sea and the area around it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_%26_Pleasures_on_the_S...

So two natural questions is it possible to deal with the dust either at the source, by collecting the dust somehow and treating it? Or perhaps it would be possible for people to to not get it inside homes and workplaces with appropriate hvac systems?

Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner, worth a read!

Salton sea features heavily, and you’ll learn the whole American West is on as fragile a water setup with similar health, civil and economic problems to follow as what this Salton sea example, but imagine it applying LA-wide, central Oregon-wide, Salt Lake valley-wide.

Water issues out west will be a major issue of USA’s next 70 years. Very scary stuff.

I spent a few days in Bombay Beach, a small town right on the Salton Sea. There's a community of people that call this place home, most seem to be artists, outcasts or just people drawn to the ability to purchase an entire house for $20,000.

The air is clearly toxic, you smell it the second you get there. To live there means living in olfactory mental ignorance in exchange for affordable housing and community.

Are there any maps that show this? I was trying to figure out the range affected via common pollution visualizations but most showed the air quality around the area as good. All the articles just say "close" or "nearby".

Travelling to Joshua Tree later, which isn't right next door, but I'm not sure about wind patterns and stuff.