Dust in the Wind: The Health Costs of Great Salt Lake Desiccation

Air pollution from natural sources is often subject to less regulatory oversight, but can still be caused by human activities. Understanding the role for policy requires quantifying the source's pollution contribution, for which there is currently no standard methodological approach. This paper uses the context of the shrinking Great Salt Lake in Utah to model air quality impacts of the highly erodible and growing area of exposed lakebed. Using four common identification strategies in the air pollution literature, and three alternative pollution measurement technologies, we find consistent evidence of meaningful pollution increases attributable to the shrinking lake in non-winter months. Estimates are relatively invariant to measurement technology but vary across identification strategies. Marginal annual costs range from $81 to $175 million per 100 km² of exposed lakebed. Scaling to the area of total exposed lakebed, annual desiccation-related health cost estimates range from $1.1 billion to $2.3 billion. Given the direct relationship between human water use in the basin and exposed lakebed, these results provide evidence for the cost-effectiveness of policies aimed at reducing consumptive water use.