Utah ’s slap-up Salt Lake is evaporating like a elephantine puddle due to drought and water deviation . This evaporation is exposing the lake bed and , accord to a new written report , liberate dangerous dust that contains ponderous metal elements such as arsenic and lead . Utah ’s largest city and state capitol , Salt Lake City , is close to the lake and researchers have warned that the 1.2 million people in the city ’s metro surface area risk of infection being exposed to dangerous chemical substance .

TheGreat Salt Lakeis the big saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere but Utah ’s United States Department of State regime has been doing everything it can to exchange that . In the eighties , the lake appraise 8,500 km2(3,300 sq m ) . A monolithic pumping project , which rerouted water supply from the lake into the desert , combined with a farseeing drouth , has seen the lake shrink to a current low of just 2,500   km2(950 sq m ) .

Regions of the now - exposed lakebed are emitting large quantity of dust . chemic psychoanalysis of these particles has revealed some disturbing result . “ You ’re talking about a very large detritus origin located next to a very with child population , and you ’ve get raise levels of manganese , iron , copper , and lead , ” said Centennial State - authorKerry Kelly , a prof of chemical substance technology at the University of Utah in astatement .

gamy level of any of these constituent in our atmosphere is bad news . Lead can cause developmental issues and damage the mind and kidneys . Dust arrest the passage metallic element atomic number 26 , copper , and manganese can irritate the lung and lead to inflammation and respiratory conditions like bronchial asthma . undue levels of arsenic have been associate to respiratory irritation , nitty-gritty disease and , in life-threatening case , a type of gangrene called Blackfoot disease . Analysis showed that , when compare to other potential debris sources in the region , Great Salt Lake sediments could spread through the human body more well .

“ When you breathe in something that ’s really responsive , it ’s going to interact with the cells inside your lung and it ’s going to cause damage , ” Kelly said .

Kelly and her squad turned sediment sample into aerosols to find particles small enough to become lodged in lung tissue . The particles ’ chemical and physical properties were take apart using inductively couple quite a little plasm mass spectrographic analysis .

The study not only concluded that chemicals were present in the lake detritus but also note that the monitoring equipment required to turn out if residential region in Salt Lake City are at risk of vulnerability has not yet been localise up .

One piece of good news to go forth from the study is that just 9 % of the exposed lakebed is currently give off dust . A protective crust across the rest of the lakebed is currently keeping more toxic elements seal forth . But a prevue of what toxic junk can do lies about 900 km ( 560 mi ) to the lake ’s south , where the drying Salton Sea has become an environmental catastrophe .

Kelly ’s carbon monoxide - writer and colleagueKevin Perry , a prof of atmospheric sciences , said , “ It sprain out that the dust from Great Salt Lake has more leachable metals that are bioavailable than we would wish well . ”

The study was published in the journalAtmospheric Environment .