Allie Ward

Not at all.

And it's not just the salt and sea.

In the 2024 paper, Harmful Dust from Drying Lakes, preserving Great Salt Lake water levels decreases ambient dust and racial disparities in population exposure.

It lays it all out for Utah, stating that the drying of lakes with no outlets called terminal lakes or inland seas is a major ecological catastrophe of the 21st century.

And these lake beds are drying in part due to decreased inflows of water because of climate change and also due to increasing human demands for water.

And the study found that two major benefits of stabilizing those water levels for the Great Salt Lake would be to decrease that airborne dust and reduce racial disparities in population exposures to dust.

So halting the lake from drying up would protect human and ecological health.

while promoting environmental justice.

And for more on environmental justice, we have a critical ecology episode, which we're going to link in the show notes.

But on other continents, the 2025 paper, Toxic Dust Emission from Drought-Exposed Lake Beds, A New Air Pollution Threat from Dried Lakes.

Researchers in China found that a large number of lakes worldwide are shrinking rapidly due to climate change and human activities, and pollutants accumulated in these lakebed sediments are released into the atmosphere as dust aerosols.

The study found that Poyang Lake and Dongting Lake, the largest lakes in East China, experienced these record-breaking droughts with up to 99% of the areas exposed to air.

And the team found that the dust generated from the lake beds exceeded the regional thresholds of carcinogenic risk and may get worse as climate change progresses.

So toxic water evaporates.

It leaves the toxins to become toxic dust in the wind, hastening our own return to being dust in the wind.

I mean, dust devils do seem like ghosts.

And then you also have a particulate matter that could one day slowly, painfully kill you.

Also fish particles in there.

Just the stink puddle is what that is.

Can I ask you some questions from people who are excited that you're coming on?