Children who live within 7 miles of the Salton Sea, a dry body of water with high levels of salt and pollutants in California’s Imperial Valley, have slower growth in lung function between the ages of 10 and 12 than children who live further away. This effect is comparable to living within 500 meters of a highway and can affect respiratory health well into adulthood. The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health and was just published in the journal Science. JAMA network open.
The Salton Sea is a salt lake near the U.S.-Mexico border that was formed in 1905 when the Colorado River breached an irrigation channel. Today, the lake has shrunk due to drought, heat, and water diversion, exposing large areas of the dry lakebed and releasing dust into the air as particulates. This type of pollution is known to increase the risk of lung, heart, immune, and neurological problems.
Local studies track respiratory illnesses, including the development of asthma, but this is the first study by the Keck School of Medicine, a group led by the University of Southern California, to directly examine changes in lung capacity. The findings on long-term patterns of lung function could have implications beyond the Imperial Valley, as drought and rising temperatures cause other lakes, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah and the Aral Sea in Central Asia, to shrink and release dust.
“Our findings are concerning because they may have long-term health implications. Our study suggests that reduced lung growth during critical developmental periods, such as adolescence, may lead to an increased risk of respiratory, cardiovascular, and metabolic diseases later in life,” said Fangqi Guo, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study.
Lung function typically undergoes a rapid growth spurt during adolescence and then peaks in young adulthood. More research is needed to understand what happens when development is interrupted, but continued lung capacity problems can have lasting health effects.
Dust exposure and lung function
The Keck School of Medicine team partnered with Comite Civico del Valle, a long-time local community organization, to recruit children for the region’s first long-term health study. The researchers followed 369 children, whose average age at the start of the study was 10 years old, for about two years.
Lung function was measured in two ways: forced vital capacity (FVC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1). FVC measures how much air your lungs can expel after a deep breath, and FEV1 tests how quickly that air is pushed out of your lungs. Together, these measurements can show whether air is flowing normally through the lungs.
The researchers also calculated the distance between each child’s home and the Salton Sea, and obtained data on spikes in particulate pollution and dust levels from local air quality monitors. Their analysis controlled for the effects of age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, height, BMI, and respiratory health status at the start of the study.
Children living within 11 kilometers of the Salton Sea had a 52.18 milliliter lower increase in FVC per year and a 38.7 milliliter lower increase in FEV1 per year compared to children living further away. Prolonged exposure to high levels of dust is also associated with reduced FVC and FEV1 growth, especially in children living near the ocean.
protect your long-term health
These findings add to the group’s previous research showing that more than one in five children in the region have asthma, almost three times the national average. These findings suggest that unless trends are reversed, this population may face pulmonary, cardiac, and metabolic problems later in life.
“We don’t yet know whether these changes are permanent. Reducing environmental exposure may reduce some of the damage, because children’s lungs are still developing,” said Shohreh F. Farzan, Ph.D., associate professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine and co-senior author of the study.
California officials are already working to address the environmental and health impacts of drying up the lake through a 10-year plan known as the Salton Sea Management Program. Researchers say more comprehensive measures are needed to protect children’s health as hot, dry conditions worsen in California and around the world.
Next, the team will continue to monitor children to see whether the effects on lung function persist into adolescence and adulthood. They are also studying which components of dust are most harmful, including dust from the Salton Sea, wind-blown desert dust and diesel exhaust fumes, as part of a broader study of air pollution in the Imperial Valley.
About this study
In addition to Guo and Farzan, the study’s other authors are Sandrah P. Eckel, Department of Population and Public Health, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California; Jill E. Johnston, Elizabeth M. Kamai, and Dayan Duenas Barahona of the University of California, Irvine; Luis Olmedo, Esther Bejarano, and Cristian Torres of the Civico del Valle Committee in Brawley, California; Christopher Zuidema and Edmond Seto of the University of Washington (Seattle, Washington);
This research was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center (5P30ES007048-21S1; 5P30ES007048-22S1) and the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine 2017-2018 Dean’s Pilot Funding Program. Funding for enrollment expansion and long-term follow-up of the cohort was provided by NIEHS (R01ES029598; 3R01ES029598-04S1).
sauce:
Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California
Reference magazines:
Guo F, Kamai EM, Eckel SP et al. Distance to a dry saline lake and the development of lung function in a rural border child population. JAMA net open. 2026;9(4):e264812. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.4812. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2847290
