Southern California's Salton Sea was once a resort playground, with sunny beaches, celebrities and people waterskiing on the vast inland lake in the 1950s and '60s.
Today, those resorts are long gone, replaced by a drying and increasingly toxic landscape. As the lake shrinks, wind blowing across the exposed lake bed kicks up toxic dust left by years of agriculture chemicals and metals washing into the lake. That dust makes its way into the lungs of the children of the Imperial Valley.
New research from our team of epidemiologists at University of Southern California and University of California, Irvine, shows that blowing dust is impeding the lung growth of children in the region - especially those living closest to the Salton Sea. In fact, the effects on lung function close to the Salton Sea have been greater than what studies find in urban California communities near busy roadways.
As the lake's water sources diminish with the region's Colorado River water use agreements, and this region gains more industrial activity from proposed lithium extraction, air pollution is likely to only worsen.
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