Dust Is a Growing Problem. What Role Does Farmland Play?
In December, the skies took on an eerie sepia glow. Visibility dropped to almost zero as a massive dust storm roiled through the Great Plains states, impacting 100 million people. Two weeks later, high winds and severe drought led to the devastating Marshall wildfire in urban northern Colorado.
Dust storms aren’t unusual in these areas, but they typically occur in the spring and at a smaller scale. And yet, as a two-decade drought persists in the West, scientists are concerned that they could become even more prevalent. This is, after all, Dust Bowl terrain. “It was never easy land to begin with; climate change is just going to make it more difficult,” says Becky Bolinger, a Colorado state climatologist who shared a warning on Twitter about the possibility of a dust event the day before the storm.
As the percentage of dust in the air increases, so do hospital visits for respiratory complications, as well as dust-borne diseases such as Valley Fever and meningococcal meningitis.
Dust is a growing concern for a number of reasons. As the climate-fueled drought across the western half of the country continues and irrigation sources likely become limited on farms—resulting, potentially in the increasing the amount of bare, fallowed land—researchers are working hard to identify dust hot spots and how they are linked to agriculture.
Traffic accidents are also a growing concern across the western U.S., where dust affects road visibility. In the last two decades, car crash victims and insurance companies have shown an interest in holding farmers accountable for poor practices that created dust sources—but their liability is hard to prove.
Importantly, many of today’s dust events are region-wide phenomena. All fall, throughout eastern Colorado, “it’s really been bone dry,” says Bolinger. “I’m not sure there was much that agricultural communities could have done to mitigate the amount of dust that was up in the air.”
At the same time, tillage has increased in the region in recent years as farmers work to combat a growing number of herbicide-resistant weeds, explains Eugene Kelly, a soil scientist at Colorado State University.
During the unprecedented December storm, satellite imagery captured dozens of sites in the southeastern corner of Colorado and the Oklahoma panhandle where the dust was first lofted into the air, a region known among dust researchers as an active source area. Eastern Colorado soils are 70 percent windblown loess, but cultivation, grazing, construction, and roads—anything that destabilizes the soil—can generate dust, says Kelly. “These episodic events are really damaging because they can move an awful lot of material,” he adds.
Still, scientists are working to understand “the chaotic cascade of dynamics that causes a dust storm to initiate a particular point in space and a particular point in time,” says Thomas Gill, a dust researcher at University of Texas at El Paso. Nevertheless, his research points to agriculture as an important source to watch.
Read more
Other
The Mesothelioma Center
| Contact details: |
| a: The Mesothelioma Center | 1 S. Orange Avenue, Suite 301, Orlando, Fl | 32801 e: eortega@asbestos.com p: (321) 284-8312 |
https://www.asbestos.com/occupations/farmers/
Agricultural workers and farmers work on farms to produce crops, livestock and dairy products. Farmers are at risk of exposure to asbestos through soil, vermiculite and products on farming equipment and machinery. Our organization provides free informational books, packets and a Patient Advocacy program that works 1-on-1 with individuals to help them find local doctors, treatment centers and support groups.
