Young children are suffering from alarmingly high rates of asthma near the Salton Sea, study finds
Teachers and administrators at schools near the Salton Sea have grown accustomed to helping students with asthma, often keeping inhalers on hand in case dusty air triggers an attack.
A new survey of the families of first- and second-graders at four schools in the Imperial Valley confirms that the children are suffering from alarmingly high rates of asthma and other respiratory problems.
The survey was carried out by researchers from the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, who are focusing on the health of children near the shrinking lake.
At Fremont Primary School in Calipatria, they found that 30 percent of the parents who filled out the questionnaire said their child had been diagnosed with asthma. The percentage at other schools varied from 16 percent of first- and second-graders at Grace Smith Elementary in Niland to 20 percent at Westmorland Union Elementary and 21 percent at Miguel Hidalgo Elementary in Brawley.
Those percentages are vastly higher than the California-wide asthma prevalence of about 8 percent among 5-to-9-year-olds.
“People have known asthma is a major health concern here for a long time. But what we see is that it’s happening in really young kids in northern Imperial Valley,” said Jill Johnston, an assistant professor in the USC medical school’s environmental health division.
Johnston and her colleague Shohreh Farzan conducted the survey earlier this year. Johnston presented the results, which have not yet been published, at an environmental health conference in the Imperial Valley last week.
The two researchers have also collected airborne dust samples and scooped up soil samples along the shores of the Salton Sea. They’re continuing to study the dust’s makeup and the consequences for public health in communities downwind of the lake’s retreating shores.
The survey results don’t indicate how much of the children’s respiratory problems may be due to dust spewing from the shores of the Salton Sea, and how much may be due to other pollution sources, including dust from the surrounding desert, dust kicked up by farm plowing and unpaved roads, smoke from agricultural burns and traffic exhaust.
“It’s really important to think about how we clean up the air in the region, both existing sources of pollution and then also making sure that the Salton Sea is not going to be an additional burden on the communities,” Johnston said.
READ MORE: Toxic dust and asthma plague Salton Sea communities
The communities around the Salton Sea are largely Latino and among the poorest in California, with many neighborhoods largely made up of farmworkers. Johnston said these communities already face “huge health disparities” and need help to make sure they don’t have to confront an added burden of more dust in the air as the lake shrinks.
“You don’t want to tell the kids, ‘Oh, you have to stay inside today because the air is bad,’” Johnston said. “Kids have a right to play outside, to breathe clean air, so we need to be thinking about strategies and policies to make that happen.”
Johnston presented the results of the survey ahead of a Tuesday meeting where California’s State Water Resources Control Board will consider approving an agreement that would commit the state to following through on its pledges at the Salton Sea, even as much of the funding remains an open question.
If the board approves the agreement, it will set targets for state agencies tasked with building thousands of acres of ponds, wetlands and other dust-control projects around the lake over the next decade.
READ MORE: Tracking asthma threats in the Imperial Valley's hazy air
RELATED: Scientists study dust around the Salton Sea
The agreement is based on the state’s 10-year plan for the lake, which Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration released in March. The $383 million blueprint calls for building ponds and wetlands along portions of the shore to cover growing expanses of dusty lakebed and create habitat for fish and birds.
So far, $80.5 million has been approved to partially pay for those projects. California voters will have the opportunity to approve $200 million more for Salton Sea projects as part of a $4 billion bond measure on the ballot in June.
During the environmental health conference, one of the speakers led the audience in chants of “Restore Salton Sea now!” and “Clean air for all!”
The USC researchers have been collaborating with the Brawley-based nonprofit Comité Cívico Del Valle. They’ve sent dust samples to fellow researchers at the University of Iowa, who are analyzing the dust to check for heavy metals and other toxic pollutants.
Conducting their survey, the researchers distributed about 400 questionnaires to parents of first- and second-graders at the four schools. Of those, 284 parents participated in the survey, and the researchers used responses from 271 questionnaires that were fully filled out.
In addition to asking whether children have been diagnosed with asthma by a doctor, the researchers also asked parents about symptoms that might sometimes go undiagnosed. Depending on the school, between 35 percent and 43 percent of parents said their children had experienced wheezing.
Between 21 percent and 31 percent of parents said their kids had required medication for asthma.
“There’s concern that there may be underdiagnosis of asthma in the community,” Johnston said. “But if you ask questions around wheezing, waking up during the night, you can get a sense of additional people that may have asthma or asthma-like symptoms.”
They also asked questions about whether the mother has asthma, whether the child has had bronchitis or pneumonia, how much time the child spends outdoors and playing spots, and whether the family’s home has a problem with mold, among other things.
Farzan, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at USC, said it’s concerning that such high percentages of families are reporting kids with asthma or kids wheezing.
“We are seeing rates that are quite a bit higher than state and national averages,” she said. The next step in the research, Farzan said, will be to link information from the analysis of the dust with the health data to see if there are clear trends.
“We’re hoping to repeat the survey and hopefully get a second response from the parents that participated this year, see how the kids are doing,” Farzan said.
The Salton Sea was created between 1905 and 1907, when floodwaters from the Colorado River burst through canals and filled the low-lying basin known as the Salton Sink, covering an ancient lakebed.
The lake has been sustained for more than a century by water running off farmland in the Imperial Valley. But the amount of water flowing into the lake is decreasing, and more than 18,000 acres of dry lakebed have been left exposed as the shorelines have retreated over the past two decades.
The sea’s decline reflects the growing strains on the Colorado River. Under a water transfer deal approved in 2003, the Imperial Irrigation District is selling increasing quantities of water to growing urban areas in San Diego County and the Coachella Valley.
The agreement called for the Imperial district to send “mitigation water” from its canals into the sea through 2017. At the end of this year, that flow of water will be cut off and the lake will recede more rapidly.
Imperial County already has the highest rate of asthma-related emergency room visits for children in California, and the problem is expected to get worse as tens of thousands of acres of lakebed are left high and dry around the lake over the next decade.
If the ponds and wetlands are fully built as planned, they would cover up 29,800 acres by 2028 – less than half of the more than 60,000 acres of dry lakebed that will be left exposed over the next 10 years.
At West Shores High School in Salton City, Principal Richard Pimentel said he doesn’t have an exact count of how many students have breathing problems, but he estimates that one in five students has some type of respiratory disease.
“They don’t all have inhalers, but they all have some kind of asthma history, symptoms,” Pimentel said. “I consider it a very significant problem.”
Pimentel is a runner and he used to jog often along the shore of the Salton Sea, but he said lately he’s grown concerned about the particulates in the air. On windy days, the dust billows from along the shoreline and forms a haze that hangs in the air.
“This is a huge crisis if they don’t do something now. And I’m actually a little fearful that we’ve gone past a point of no return,” Pimentel said. “It almost feels like we’re forgotten a little bit.”
Ian James writes about water and environmental issues for The Desert Sun. Reach him at ian.james@desertsun.com, 760-778-4693 or on Twitter at @TDSIanJames.