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According to new research, dust from the shrinking Great Salt Lake could cost Utahns more than just their health—it could also hit their wallets. A University of Utah assistant professor calculates the economic impact and explains what he found when it comes to the price of living with dust.
An interest in dust impact
New research suggests that dust storms coming from the shrinking Great Salt Lake are costing the local economy millions of dollars every year, and the findings started with an assistant professor’s one simple question.
Sitting at his office computer on the University of Utah campus, Dr. Albert Garcia scrolled through a spreadsheet filled with hundreds of data points in the entry boxes.
Looking over to a second monitor, he quickly typed up lines of code, running calculations on costs related to Great Salt Lake dust.
“I'm really interested—What are the impacts of dust exposure among the communities here in Utah?” he said.
Dr. Garcia is a University of Utah assistant professor with a shared appointment between the Department of Economics and School of Environment, Society, and Sustainability. His work examines the intersection of environment and economy, and in this most recent project he set out to understand the costs of the drying Great Salt Lake.
“We’re trying to translate the impacts of these dust emissions into something that is maybe more salient for policymakers,” he said.
The numbers on Dr. Garcia’s computer may be hard to decipher on the back end, but he pointed to the resulting charts and graphs that Garcia explained show a clear trend.
What he’s finding: The price Utahns pay to live next to the shrinking Great Salt Lake is substantial already and only expected to rise.
The cost of health outcomes
To arrive at an actual economic cost, Dr. Garcia first looked at where Great Salt Lake dust is blowing, which he was able to do thanks to work done by colleague Dr. Derek Mallia.
Dr. Mallia created a dust modeling map, predicting how much dust will blow into surrounding communities during wind storms at different set lake levels.
“So that feeds into my models,” Dr. Garcia explained. “I consider factors like the local population. Perhaps certain communities aren't able to avoid these adverse health impacts.”
Not only did he figure out who is at risk of getting sick, he looked at how their health could be impacted.
For example, he described how if an area has a higher elderly population, there’s likely more chance for premature deaths related to dust exposure.
“Or if there's a really young population,” Dr. Garcia continued, “that's maybe where we expect more of those asthma symptoms to arise.”
From there, he computed costs from predicted health outcomes, like missing work or school.
“There are going to be hundreds or even a thousand missed school days over the course of a couple of years because of these extreme dust events,” he noted.
Dr. Garcia also factored in medical bills.
“In the context of like a hospitalization or an emergency department visit, it's kind of saying what's the average charge of an asthma-induced emergency department visit to a patient without insurance, perhaps?” he explained. “And if we add up all of those emergency department visits that we think the dust actually causes, what is the cost?”
Dr. Garcia tabulated impacts from people estimated to die prematurely from health problems related to dust.
“We use a measure called value of a statistical life. And so that is taking people's willingness to pay to avoid risk of death,” he said.
Learning the magnitude
According to all of Dr. Garcia’s calculations, Great Salt Lake dust is costing the local economy tens of millions of dollars a year.
“Annually, we think that the effects of dust right now are around thirty million dollars, but we expect those to rise in the future, based on projections for Utah's demographic population,” he said.
Over the course of the next 20 years, he explained negative health outcomes and premature deaths could set the Salt Lake area community back one billion dollars.
“No one is really surprised that the dust causes asthma or leads to some premature mortality,” Dr. Garcia said. “But I think what we're really learning is the magnitude of those effects.”
He said it speaks to the importance of ecosystem health and how it can affect local communities.
“It's easy to understand one [person] or imagine one person having an asthma attack, and wondering if that's actually related to the Salt Lake,” he said. “But it's another to actually try to make that link to which impacts actually are directly related to that dust exposure.”
Dr. Garcia expressed the hope that his research will direct more attention to improving healthcare and resources to adapt to dust for groups more impacted by exposure.
His goal is also to help policymakers, as Utah searches for solutions.
“I'm really hoping this research just spurs additional thoughts about what we should do to moderate the issue with the drying Salt Lake,” Dr. Garcia said. “Even though we should be valuing those intrinsic values of having a healthy community, I think some of this research can speak to helping people understand saliently of the overall cost to our local community.”
