People walk on a section of the Great Salt Lake that used to be underwater on Augnear Magna, Utah. Particle pollution in the air has been linked to asthma, heart attacks, worsened lung function and premature death. Sitting just northwest of Salt Lake City, the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere is drying up because of water use and drought amid a changing climate, sending dust with toxic metals - including arsenic - in the air of a metro area with approximately 1.2 million people.
“They evacuated the clinic, not knowing, initially, that it was actually the outdoor air pollution that set off the fire alarms in our building.”Ĭars and wildfires contribute to Utah’s air pollution, but the Great Salt Lake is a less obvious but important contributor. “They moved people outside where they stood for 45 minutes,” said Joy, a former chairwoman of the Utah Clean Air Partnership. Yet in sending the patients outside, the alarms actually put people in an even more dangerous position given the city’s air quality at the time - which was judged to be the worst in the world on that particular day. Joy, a family and sports medicine doctor, said that her patients had to be evacuated as part of the emergency response.
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