Exposing the Desert II

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The Center for Health Disparities Research at the University of California, Riverside (HDR@UCR) strives to take into account and address health disparities through anthropological, environmental, biological, and medical perspectives, and intends to provide insight on the current state of environmental hazards and the research projects seeking answers about community health. A distinct feature of HDR@UCR is it’s continued engagement with the communities it conducts research in. Through both research approaches and general engagement, HDR@UCR continues to work with community leaders to support and uplift them through the research being conducted.

HDR@UCR, under the leadership of Dr. David Lo and Dr. Juliet McMullin, presents an atmosphere conducive to the type of collaboration necessary for implementing sustainable change. Uniting researchers from all different fields, ranging from microbiologists to anthropologists, creates a project with a core of interdisciplinary research. This allows researchers with varied backgrounds, experiences, personalities, and styles of thought to dissect the same overarching issue and bring their unique contributions to the table. By recognizing that a shift in the way we address problems concerning the well-being of our people is necessary, we are pushing for a cultural shift away from linear thought, away from individualism, away from self-serving research, and towards a future founded in creativity, inclusion, and progress.

The project, titled "Disparities in Environmental Exposures and Health Impacts," is one of two projects by HDR@UCR that aim to evolve the way research is conducted and how health disparities are defined. Having heard about the ongoing ecological deterioration of the Salton Sea and the high incidence of asthma in the area, researchers affiliated with the University of California, Riverside's BREATHE Center began to seek answers for the following question: is there a connection between the ecological issues and asthma in the Salton Sea region? This ultimately led to HDR@UCR's project, which focuses on environmental aerosol exposures in Latino neighborhoods experiencing unprecedented asthma rates in the Eastern Coachella Valley, and how the exposure to these aerosols impacts long-term respiratory health.

Section Summary: Researchers at the University of California, Riverside's Center for Health Disparities Research (HDR@UCR) are working on a large project in the Salton Sea region to determine if exposure to the dust coming from the Salton Sea's drying lakebed is causing the high rates of asthma in the Salton Sea region. The project, titled "Disparities in Environmental Exposures and Health Impacts," is specifically looking at the Eastern Coachella Valley and how communities in that area are being impacted by exposure to the Salton Sea's dust.

The "Disparities in Environmental Exposures and Health Impacts" project has four goals:

1. To establish a community advisory board to provide local stakeholder input;
2. To identify spatial patterns and trends in population exposure and in pollutant transport;
3. To distribute particle collectors at sites that represent the range of sources of particulate matter and to identify the elemental and biological composition of particles;
4. To use environmental chamber exposure studies to develop a protocol for monitoring pulmonary inflammation impacts of aerosol particulates identified from the particle collectors.

This research is a starting point in building a holistic view of environmental health disparities in the Eastern Coachella Valley. In the following sections, the lead researchers for each of the four project aims discuss their work, their current progress and findings, and the next steps for moving forward.

As the Salton Sea dries up, what is the impact on the local ecology and does this ecological stress contribute to environmental risk? To answer this question, we spoke with a few researchers who have been particularly focused on assessing the surrounding environment and determining what factors may account for the adverse impacts on the community.

Dr. Emma Aronson is an environmental microbiologist and an associate professor in the department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology at the University of California, Riverside.

For the Childhood Asthma Project, Dr. Aronson is seeking to understand the driving force of some of the respiratory problems of children living near the Salton Sea by providing research on microbial communities and their movement.

“There’s a possibility that some sort of fungal spore or bacteria could be inhaled in the region and that could be causing the problems.” - Dr. Emma Aronson

Microbes might not be something that we think of as having an impact on our health but new research has been showing that lungs are not sterile. She explained,

“...there is a common assumption that the interaction between our lungs and environmental microbes is mostly an inert interaction. But we don’t know that...and it's unknown what level of microbes are in the lungs and what species are considered healthy versus unhealthy.”

Importantly, research has shown that exposure to wind-blown dust can act as a pathway for microbes, fungi, and viruses to enter lungs by attaching to dust particles (Johnston et al. 2019). In an area where drought and water transfers are exposing more and more playa, understanding microbial communities is an important step to solving the region's air quality issues. 

To understand if microbial communities could be contributing to poor air quality, Dr. Aronson is focusing on gathering dust samples in areas around the Salton Sea in order to sequence the microorganisms in the dust from the playa for bacteria and fungi. Dr. Aronson and her team have been collecting Salton Sea dust using what are known as passive dust collectors--stationary eight foot poles with a bunk pan on top full of marbles that collects dust over a period of several months by dust falling into the tray.

These passive dust collectors are stationed at UCR’s Palm Desert campus, Boyd Deep Canyon, Dos Palmas, Wister, and Sonny Bono National Wildlife Refuge. Two criteria were considered while determining the location of the dust collectors; permission by land owners to place samplers, and enough isolation to protect the collection process from curious passers-by who could unknowingly interfere with the experiment. For the next round of dust collection, Dr. Aronson is employing active dust collectors, which utilize a vacuum pump to pull air through a filtration system. These active collectors speed up the dust collection process, as they can collect the proper amount of dust in a few hours, compared to the passive dust collectors which take months to obtain a sufficient sample size and must be taken down during the rainy season.

To decide the placement of this new round of dust collectors, Dr. Aronson has been consulting maps generated by Dr. William Porter (whose work is discussed below), which reveal wind patterns that carry the Salton Sea dust. Additionally, she is in contact with HDR@UCR’s community advisory board for the Childhood Asthma project (discussed more in Dr. Cheney’s interview) to determine which areas should be centers for dust collection. Through community engagement via discussion and surveys, these researchers are determining which locations the community values most in terms of sample collection, such as near homes, schools, and places of work. In some of these cases, community members have assisted by offering to get the necessary permission for Dr. Aronson to place her collectors on these properties. Additionally, one of her graduate students is seeking funding to purchase active dust collectors that can be worn by residents in order to get an understanding of the types of dust residents come into contact with.

The steps following the collection of dust samples involve taking a closer look at the microbial communities and identifying any known toxins that may be involved in the extremely high incidence of asthma-like symptoms experienced in the region. Dr. Aronson and her team are sequencing microorganisms in the dust, in surface samples of the playa, and from samples of the sea itself, and then going on to sequence those for bacteria and fungi. With some of those samples, she will perform a method called shotgun metagenomics, which allows researchers to comprehensively sample all of the genes in each of the organisms collected in a sample. From there, researchers can seek to make sense of which genes are present and what they are doing in the microbial community. After getting a better sense of which microbes are present in the dust, they can identify potential candidates in the production of toxins.

She explains,

“If you have a specific toxin you're looking for, you can target that and look for it in your samples.”

One specific microbe the research team is testing for is microcystin--a cyanotoxin compound produced by certain types of cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria, more commonly referred to as blue-green algae, is a known toxin considered harmful to humans and animals. Cyanobacteria is associated with algae blooms caused by an excess of nutrients, whose production can range from minimal to explosive, altering the presence of the bacteria at different points of sample collection. So far, they have found low levels of this bacteria, though these findings are not necessarily conclusive. These age blooms and correlating existence of bacteria can bring about a cascade of issues for the ecosystem, including but not limited to the potential for the production of toxins that can travel to nearby communities via wind, inflicting illness.

Dr. Aronson states,

“Even though we're not seeing it in samples of randomly grabbed seawater, doesn't mean that's not the issue that we're experiencing, because it could be that during these blooms it's produced and then blowing off and causing the illness. We haven't gotten to the point where we can identify that, but we are currently starting to test samples for it.” 

If Dr. Aronson can eliminate microcystin as a culprit, she can move on to another candidate, while continuing to sequence for other potential compounds responsible for the health issues of the communities. Concurrently, some of the samples from Dr. Aronson’s dust collection experiments are being studied in chamber exposures by Dr. David Lo. This is to determine possible immune responses and changes to microbiome of the lungs in the residents of the region by studying the impact of exposure on mice as a representation of what might be occurring in humans. More information on Dr. Lo's work and the chamber exposures will be discussed under the "Dust Exposure" section of this StoryMap.

Section Summary: Dr. Aronson believes there may be toxic elements that cling to the dust produced by the drying Salton Sea's lakebed and shores. When people breathe in the air, they also inhale this dust with the attached elements, which may result in severe health problems (ex. asthma, lung issues, etc.) that would not necessarily arise if people were exposed to "normal" dust. This could explain why there are so many cases of asthma and lung problems in the area. Currently, her research team is collecting dust in the Salton Sea area and is running tests to see if her belief is true, while looking to find out what types of elements are sticking to the dust.

More information about Dr. Aronson can be accessed via the site below.

Researcher, UCR Center for Health Disparities Research (HDR@UCR)

Dr. William Porter is an assistant professor of atmospheric dynamics and modeling in the department of Environmental Science at the University of California, Riverside and is a researcher for the Childhood Asthma Project with the Center for Health Disparities at UCR.

His role in this project is to take a closer look at the possible connection between childhood asthma and dust exposure in the Eastern Coachella Valley.

Specifically, Dr. Porter looks at hospitalizations and survey reports of respiratory disease to determine patterns in relation to dust concentrations and sources. This work attempts to address questions surrounding wind patterns and dust emissions in the ECV, and their possible connection to asthma risk.

To answer this question, Dr. Porter is using models that look at dust emissions and transport. His simulations over the Salton Sea simulate a few days of wind dynamics at a time and attempt to reproduce meteorological dynamics over the Salton Sea and in the Coachella and Imperial valleys. He has been collaborating with meteorologists, soil scientists and others to reproduce wind patterns and dust events over the past few years.

The topography of the area, with many steep hills and sudden changes in elevation, makes it tricky to accurately reproduce atmospheric dynamics in the region. Dr. Porter explains the process:

“Say in February we have a lot of observations. We know that there was a dust storm and then I’ll run those five days in my model to make sure that we can capture the key details of that dust event. If not, we tinker with it, increase the resolution, or change parameterization schemes that we have for different kinds of atmospheric processes.”

Following optimization and validation, these tools allow Dr. Porter to better reproduce and understand regional patterns in dust emissions and transport.  

In addition to atmospheric modeling, Dr. Porter and his graduate student assistant, Yaning Miao, are using existing data sets such as long-term records of observed dust and particulates and health data from hospitals and surveys to compare with the dust events they study. Dr. Porter noted that while none of their data is perfect, his team is piecing together some clues about what is driving the health problems in the Eastern Coachella Valley.

Since hospital data is scrubbed of anything that would be an invasion of privacy, Dr. Porter draws correlations between the number of people going to a hospital in a particular region during a known dust event. He explains,

“We can say, there was a big dust event here and a lot of people from this area went to the hospital for respiratory disease...whereas when the wind was blowing in this direction, we still had a dust event but there were fewer number of people that went to the hospital at this particular time.”

 Dr. Porter’s work has consisted of mapping the seasonal wind patterns and gathering data from local hospitals, but the consequences of this work may depend on the mouse chamber models run by Dr. Lo. If those experiments reveal a conclusive signal between exposed playa dust or Salton Sea water and human health outcomes, then his research questions will be threefold: who is being affected by exposure to these pollutants currently, who is going to be affected by exposure in thirty years when the water levels drop, and what needs to be done to mitigate and to help people who are exposed to this toxic dust?

While early results from the mouse chamber experiments have found some unique impacts of exposure to Salton Sea particulates, it is not clear yet what compounds may be causing these responses, or why. The mouse chamber experiments, which are being spearheaded by Dr. David Lo, will be discussed in more depth in the "Dust Exposure" section of this StoryMap. Whether or not the exposure tests reveal a clear connection between exposed playa and the types of symptoms people have in the Eastern Coachella Valley and Imperial Valley, Dr. Porter explains there is still a well-known connection between dust and respiratory health and it will still be important to look at how we can improve awareness of what kinds of dust events may be coming, what kinds of wind patterns are most likely to lead to dust emissions and exposure, and how we can better protect human health in vulnerable communities. 

Section Summary: Dr. Porter is looking at how the wind in the area may travel the dust being produced by the Salton Sea's drying lakebed and where the dust is traveling. He is also looking at when dust storms in the region occur, and how many people visit the emergency room during these dust storms. It is difficult to find out where people are coming from when they go the the emergency room during these times because of privacy laws. However, if there was a large dust storm that was blowing dust from the Salton Sea area toward a particular population and there are more emergency room visits in the region, a person can assume that there's a connection between those events. 

More information about Dr. Porter can be accessed via the site below.

Many researchers, such as the ones featured in this StoryMap, believe that dust pollution and exposure to drying lakebed dust is unhealthy. More specifically, the high dust levels in the region are assumed to affect health by many researchers. However, that doesn't answer the fundamental question: how does the dust actually affect lung inflammation? To answer this question, we turn to HDR@UCR's co-director, Professor David Lo, for more information.

As the Senior Associate Dean of UCR’s Medical School and founder of The Center for Health Disparities Research, Dr. Lo stands at the forefront of modern medicine with his passionate, interdisciplinary approach to combating health disparities at their core.

Much of Dr. Lo’s work surrounds the incidence of asthma in the Eastern Coachella Valley. While research has previously been conducted on air quality in the region, Dr. Lo suggests it’s possible that we may need to reframe our questions to take into consideration the unique environment of the Eastern Coachella Valley. One question that Dr. Lo introduces is whether “asthma” is always actually asthma. It is possible the health patterns we are seeing in the community members of the Salton Sea could be more than the typical inflammatory response in the lungs and that classifying these cases as asthma is a gross oversimplification of what is unfolding.

Studies that have taken place have typically focused on long-term exposure to allergens, which in itself is extremely important research, but it fails to take into consideration the unusual circumstances of the Salton Sea and the additional damage that is potentially done to the lungs when these allergens are infused with toxins. An abnormally high occurrence of asthma within the communities surrounding the Salton Sea served as a red flag to researchers including Dr. Lo, who understood that there are clearly some gaps in knowledge that need to be filled in order to understand the health crisis taking place. With this in mind, Dr. Lo turned to interdisciplinary, community-guided research through the creation of an entire center in the search for answers. 

As the director of the UCR School of Medicine’s BREATHE center—a multidisciplinary collaborative aimed at discovering the health effects the toxins in the air we breathe—Dr. Lo is currently conducting a study to determine the effects of the specific aerosols from the Salton Sea on lung inflammation.

This experiment involves pumping the aerosols into environmental chambers and introducing mice into these chambers. The goal is to observe and identify any reactions occurring in the mice and determine whether these reactions have any relation to those the people living in the Salton Sea region experience. Being able to properly identify which microbes have which effects is crucial in getting a sense of what we are working with in order to bring attention to this health disparity and lay the groundwork for sustainable change. 

Dr. Lo’s foundation of HDR@UCR and the BREATHE center present an atmosphere conducive to the type of collaboration necessary for implementing sustainable change. Uniting researchers from all different fields, ranging from microbiologists to anthropologists, creates a project with a core of intersectionality. This allows researchers with varied backgrounds, experiences, personalities, and styles of thought to dissect the same overarching issue and bring their unique contributions to the table. By recognizing that a shift in the way we address problems concerning the well-being of our people is necessary, we are pushing for a cultural shift away from linear thought, away from individualism, away from self-serving research, and towards a future founded in creativity, inclusion, and progress.

Section Summary: Dr. Lo is researching asthma in the area. More specifically, he is trying to see if the dust in the area is causing irritation to the lungs that is different than asthma but is being categorized as asthma. In order to do this, his research team has built a box that exposes mice to the Salton Sea's drying lakebed dust and observing if the mice's lungs react similarly to the people in the Salton Sea, and what exactly in the dust is causing those reactions.

More information about Dr. Lo can be accessed via the site below.

In environmental-health related research, it is important to recognize the role of environmental justice and socioeconomic circumstances which can further determine how communities are impacted by environmental factors. Health disparities and research surrounding health disparities requires an interdisciplinary and holistic approach to not only assess the physical health of individuals, but also look at how health has impacted the lived experiences of individuals. 

Dr. Cheney is attempting to answer the following question: What can we learn from the residents about their experience in living with asthma, and can this help us understand the disease?

Dr. Ann Cheney, a distinguished medical anthropologist and advocate for social justice, defines health disparities as an embodiment of disadvantage in which particular historically marginalized groups of individuals experience disproportionate barriers to health and ability to live well.

With a background in anthropology, Dr. Cheney brings a community-centered perspective to research, which is especially crucial to a project such as this, in which the main objective is to engage with and advocate for the communities impacted by the ecological disaster of the Salton Sea.  

Due to generations of “helicopter researchers”—researchers who engage communities to collect data but do not share their results—conducting studies in the ECV, members of these communities often hold reservations in allowing research to be done. With this in mind, it is our task to assure mothers, fathers, teachers, hometown heroes, and activists alike that our aim is to provide the tools to bring about public policy change as well as facilitate dissemination of our findings among the community. 

What makes this project unique is the transdisciplinary approach being taken. Our union of researchers ranging from anthropologists such as Dr. Cheney to microbiologists is especially symbolic in tumultuous times such as these. Humanity seeks connection, unity, and progress and oftentimes the best way to achieve these things is through a holistic perspective which brings together valuable insights that may not be reached from any one particular viewpoint. As our mission statement for our research expresses the significance of community engagement, our most valued researchers are the community members themselves. Through participatory research, we ask the community to set their own agenda and follow their lead in addressing the issues most prevalent in their lives.

Section Summary: Dr. Cheney is working with community members in the Eastern Coachella Valley to include them in the research and conversations about the Salton Sea and the impacts it has on health. She does this by informing them about the research being done, gives them the opportunity to ask questions about the research, and helps lead conversations about policy changes that may help the community and those impacted by negative health outcomes who live near the Salton Sea.

More information about Dr. Cheney can be accessed via the site below.

The ecological troubles and dust storms at the Salton Sea are not the first of its kind, nor will it be the last. Water systems across the United States, particularly in the Southwest, are over utilized and the communities surrounding these drying lakes will be the first to be affected by their demise. How the Salton Sea is dealt with is a critical test of our ability to deal with these problems and ensure that no one is left in the dust.

With these story maps, we hope to compose a living document which we can then disseminate along with any other tools we can provide to allow those affected by the ecological turmoil of the sea to find equity and justice via policy, research and the uplifting of lived experiences.

In our next StoryMap we will talk with members from the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indians and members of the Eastern Coachella Valley to hear their experiences with dust storms, environmental health, and their insights on restoration projects.

Click on the link below for the Center for Health Disparities website for more information about HDR@UCR and to keep a look out for the next chapter in this unfolding story.