This project is needed to address the human health impacts, especially on the indigenous and latino communities in the region and will provide critical data from ongoing and planned dust mitigation…

This project is needed to address the human health impacts, especially on the indigenous and latino communities in the region and will provide critical data from ongoing and planned dust mitigation projects in the region.declining sea levels due to the impacts of prolonged drought, climate change, and agricultural to urban water transfers are reducing inflows, which lower surface water elevations of the lake and exposing lakebed. The exposed lakebed contributes to air quality challenges that impact human health by emitting dust. This dust negatively impacts local air quality and poses health risks to residents in imperial and riverside counties. Communities surrounding the sea experience a higher incidence of asthma, broadly attributed to the dust generated in the region. This study will involve collection of water, playa soil, and dusts collected from several sites around salton sea across seasons. Collection sites at different distances from the sea will also help assess the impact of distance from the exposed playa on the composition of the collected dust. In this project, the recipient will work with our community partners to identify sites around the salton sea where the impact of aerosol dust generation at exposed playa is of particular concern. This will be accomplished through a subrecipient with health assessment and research for communities (harc), a nonprofit organization that collects health assessment survey data in the community, which will use community based surveys and geospatial mapping to help US identify the communities most severely impacted by the proximity to salton sea dusts.project may include the following key activities and objectives collect salton sea water, lake sediments, playa surface and subsurface soil, and dust generated at areas with exposed playa, and further from the sea samples will be analyzed by several criteria, including organic content, especially components associated with microbes in the salton sea ecosystem conduct survey s of communities surrounding the salton sea to identify communities with highest incidence of childhood asthma symptoms use geospatial mapping tools to identify any correlations between the prevalence of asthma symptoms and proximity to exposed salton sea playa coordinate with and present results to reclamation and california natural resources agency.