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The Salton Sea is now smelly all year long and making people's asthma worse. The culprit? Bacteria

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Five years ago, Lisa Clark and her husband left her hometown of El Centro 
for Niland, a small town of 500, in search for more affordable housing. 
But now they’re paying a hidden cost for living just two miles southeast 
of the Salton Sea.

“I’ve been having very bad asthma lately,” the 56-year-old manager of the 
Oasis Mobile Village RV Park said. Before, she’d need to use only one 
inhaler a year; since moving to Niland, she’s been using three. “It’s 
getting worse, and my husband’s been experiencing the same effect. Our 
health seems [to be] declining.”

The air quality is notoriously bad near the Salton Sea. As California’s 
largest lake has continued to evaporate, it’s become saltier and dustier, 
causing breathing problems for locals like Clark. Alongside the health 
problems is what she describes as a “putrid dead smell” emanating 
constantly from the water.

A soon-to-be published study by UC Riverside shows that the Salton Sea’s 
rotting odors have become a yearlong nuisance for residents in cities near 
the lake. The South Coast Air Quality Management District recently issued 
another odor advisory for parts of the Coachella Valley just north of the 
Salton Sea, a warning that covered the last six days.

Why does the Salton Sea smell so bad?
Several factors have contributed to this persistent stink, said Caroline 
Hung, a doctoral candidate and researcher in the Lyons Biogeochemistry Lab 
at UC Riverside.

For starters, the Salton Sea is very polluted, Hung said. “It’s a terminal 
lake, which means things go in, but they don’t come out.”

A flock of birds flies over the Salton Sea.
Water fowl soar above the Salton Sea. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
Agricultural runoff from nearby farms deposits fertilizer in the lake, 
causing algae to bloom rapidly in a process called eutrophication. When 
the algae decays, it consumes oxygen, making the lake hypoxic — a dead 
zone without oxygen to support marine life.

The nuisance of the rotten-egg smell is a byproduct of bacteria producing 
hydrogen sulfide during decomposition. Usually, thermal layers of the lake 
trap those odors beneath the surface, Hung said, and residents in the 
Coachella Valley would smell the lake only during hot summer days. But in 
recent years, the lake has become shallower, dropping more than 10 feet in 
the last 20 years, which has caused those layers to mix more often and the 
hydrogen sulfide scent to permeate the area year-long.

Is the stink dangerous? No and yes
Fortunately the stink itself is not a toxin, said Scott Epstein, who 
oversees air quality assessments for the South Coast Air Quality 
Management District. “Hydrogen sulfide exposure is a bit more of a 
nuisance in that it can cause headaches or nausea, but we don’t expect it 
to cause any sort of long-term health effects,” Epstein said.

For the record:

2:14 p.m. Aug. 11, 2024An earlier version of this article referred to the 
South Coast Air Quality Management District as the Southern Coast Air 
Quality Monitoring District.

But researchers have found that there is still something in the dust that 
is causing higher rates of asthma among people living near the Salton Sea. 
Dr. David Lo, director of UC Riverside’s Bridging Regional Ecology, 
Aerosolized Toxins, and Health Effects Center, said the culprit isn’t 
actually the chemicals in agricultural runoff.

“The major toxic effect is coming from these bacterial toxins that we are 
seeing in the dust,” Lo said. “Things like heavy metals and pesticides may 
be a concern, but they aren’t really at high enough levels where their 
levels in the dust are going to cause disease.”

People are silhouetted on the Salton Sea.
Sediments from the bottom are collected to study effects of runoff from 
farms into the Salton Sea in 2021. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
As the Salton Sea has become a fertilized petri dish, the prevailing winds 
have pushed aerosolized bacteria south to communities in the Imperial 
Valley where people have complained of respiratory issues.

It’s less clear if the air quality of the lake has affected local 
wildlife. There simply aren’t enough studies, said Jonathan Shore, manager 
at the Sonny Bono Salton Sea National Wildlife Refuge.

But we do know that the Salton Sea’s bacteria have also killed the lake’s 
fish by depleting its oxygen and increasing its salinity. In 1999, The 
Times reported that as many as 8 million fish were dying per day and that 
the native tilapia population in the Salton Sea was nearly wiped out.

“When there was a vibrant fish population in the sea, you would see a lot 
of pelicans and cormorants and other fish-eating birds,” Shore said. “Many 
of those are not around the Salton Sea anymore.”

Are there any solutions?
A state panel rejected a plan in 2022 to revitalize the Salton Sea by 
infusing the lake with desalinated ocean water, and residents — many of 
them from low-income and marginalized communities — have been left in 
limbo.

Two people on a boat at the Salton Sea.
Tim Lyons and Caroline Hung of USC Riverside collect samples from the 
Salton Sea in 2021. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
But Hung said she has some hope that the lithium deposits, a mile below 
the Salton Sea, could be the key to revitalizing the lake. Silicon Valley 
industries have already begun flocking to the lake for the precious 
mineral that is essential for the batteries in electric vehicles.

As the lithium draws a new wave of workers into the area, they’ll quickly 
discover that “it’s just not a pretty place to live,” Hung said. “It puts 
the Salton Sea environmental issues in the spotlight.”

In the meantime, Epstein advises residents to check air quality regularly 
through the AQMD website and suggests that they follow best practices when 
pollution is particularly bad.

“Staying inside with your windows and doors closed, minimizing heavy 
outdoor exertion, potentially wearing an N-95 mask if you have to be 
outside, running an air purifier or an air conditioner can all help reduce 
exposure,” Epstein said.

Shore lives just south of the Salton Sea in Brawley with his wife and two 
children. He worries constantly about the air quality and tries to 
mitigate its impact in their household.

“I have air filters in almost every room of my house. I change them 
frequently,” Shore said. “Changing the filters is expensive. It’s 
something that I prioritize and can afford, but I recognize that many 
people cannot.” In Brawley, the median income is $56,000 per household and 
nearly a quarter of families live in poverty.

Clark’s cost-cutting move to Niland has proven ironic. Now that her 
household medical bills have doubled, she said, it costs as much to live 
in Niland as it did in El Centro.

“We’re discussing where we would move,” Clark said of conversations with 
her husband as they consider leaving California for Oregon, Colorado or 
Utah. “We’re still up in the air about that.”

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2024-08-06/the-salton-sea-
smellier-and-saltier-than-ever

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The Salton Sea is now smelly all year long and making people's asthma worse. The culprit? Bacteria useapen <yourdime@outlook.com> - 2024-09-16 07:43 +0000

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