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Fifty years after Southern California's Salton Sea formed due to an engineering mishap in 1905, the giant salt lake became a booming vacation destination. Nicknamed the "miracle in the desert," the lake offered watersports and boating, while its shores were lined with yacht clubs, vacation homes, shops and nightclubs.

However, by the 1970s, the Salton Sea had begun shrinking due to high evaporation rates and flow reductions in the Colorado River, which had fed the lake. The lake's retreat exposed muddy sediments imbued with pesticides and other agricultural chemicals from large cotton, alfalfa and vegetable farms in the Imperial and Coachella valleys.

Today, the Salton Sea is a ghost of its former self, but the lake looms larger in the lives of local residents than ever before. Its shrinking shoreline releases toxic particles so tiny that they can penetrate deep into human lungs and enter the bloodstream. Exposure to these particles can raise the risk of a range of respiratory and cardiovascular conditions , including asthma, impaired lung function and heart attacks.

The communities most affected by this pollution are low-income, racial and ethnic minorities that, for socioeconomic reasons, cannot move away or adequately protect themselves.

A study published July 1 in the journal BMC Environmental Science reveals just how bad living conditions are for some communities near the Salton Sea. The authors examined air quality and respiratory health in Latinx and Indigenous Mexican families in the Eastern Coachella Valley, finding that families must change their daily routines to protect themselves from harmful dust events.

To find out more, we spoke with study co-author Ann Cheney , a professor of social medicine, population and public health at the University of California, Riverside School of Medicine. Cheney, who oversees a free clinic for underserved minority communities in the Eastern Coachella Valley, described the daily struggles of families living near the Salton Sea and some of the measures that are needed to improve their quality of life.

Sascha Pare: The Salton Sea has shrunk by 65 square miles (168 square kilometers) and dropped by 14.6 feet (4.5 meters) over the past few decades. Why is that, and how does it affect local residents?

Ann Cheney: The Salton Sea occupies an ancient lake bed that, over the millennia, has been filled, and then dried up again. In the early 1900s, because of an engineering mistake, part of that lake bed filled, and it created the Salton Sea. [Editor's note: The sea formed when Colorado River floodwater breached an irrigation canal that was under construction in the Imperial Valley.]

Then, over decades, there were changes in the composition of the sea because the main source of water was agricultural runoff. The sea is located in the inland southern Californian desert region. In the 1940s and 1950s, there was a boom in agribusiness. This remade the landscape, and all of those chemicals and pesticides from the agricultural land seeped into the lake bed.

With [water management] decision-making around the Colorado River waters, that then meant that another source of water, which had been the Colorado River, ceased to enter into the Salton Sea. 2018 was the last time that water from the Colorado River touched the Salton Sea.

Once a booming vacation destination, the Salton Sea is now the site of an environmental disaster that affects neighboring communities. (Image credit: Mario Tama via Getty Images) Because there is the primary source of agricultural runoff going into the sea and no new fresh water coming in — and with climate change [boosting evaporation] — it's created this environment in which you have a drying sea. Over decades, there have been chemicals and heavy metals seeping into the playa [dry lake bed], and now it's exposed. It's the desert, so there's a lot of dust storms, and the winds take the exposed playa and bring it into the air, which is then breathed by the local residents.

For me, what's most concerning is that the local residents who are most affected by the poor air quality are Latinx and Indigenous Mexicans, many of whom are undocumented and have very little political voice.

SP: You asked caregivers of children with asthma and other respiratory conditions to document their experiences of living near the Salton Sea. What did those submissions reveal?

AC: When I first started doing this work, I thought about it as solely the Salton Sea [affecting people]. But it's the environment in which the Salton Sea is one contributor to poor air quality [that impacts local residents].

The caregivers perceive the Salton Sea as being a contributor to the poor respiratory health of their children. But also, this area has many disenfranchised communities that are interspersed on tribal lands, and there are different rules on these tribal lands. There is a lot of dumping and a lot of burning of trash. What we heard from caregivers is that it's not just the exposure to the toxic dust, but also the fires [that are causing issues].

A photograph submitted by one of the caregivers shows a door mat covered in dust outside their front door. (Image credit: Trinidad et al (2026). CC BY 4.0 ) In that article that we published [July 1 in BMC Environmental Science], there was an incident in which there was a fire — I think it was related to tire burning — in very close proximity to one of the apartments that one of the caregivers and her family were living in. These things happen commonly. So, from the perspective of the caregivers, there are multiple different factors that contribute to their children's poor respiratory health.

SP: Can you take me through a day in the life of one of these caregivers, based on the evidence you gathered?

AC: It could be a beautiful day. The caregiver walks outside. It's sunny; everything's beautiful. In my opinion, this environment is very beautiful. Maybe, later on in the day, there is a pickup of wind, and there's dust. Let's say the caregiver is a mother with a child who has asthma who's at school. The children are outside on the playground. Her child is going to be highly affected by the dust that's being picked up by the wind. What's going to happen is, the school will bring the child inside, and if the child doesn't have too severe of a respiratory distress, the child could stay at school. Otherwise, the caregiver will get called and have to come to school and pick up their child.

Most folks in that region are farm laborers. They're not owners of farms; they are the ones who are working the land for the owners. Many individuals who are living in very impoverished conditions — for instance, the Purépecha community, which is the Indigenous community we worked with that's from Michoacán in Mexico — are pickers. They are in the lowest-social-ranking jobs within farm labor, and, in part, that's because they may be monolingual Purépecha. That means they don't speak Spanish or English, and that limits the type of employment they can have.

In a situation where you have this very precarious employment, if your child needs to be taken out of school and you are the caregiver, then you risk losing your job. That's the type of dynamic that's at play among many of the families that we work with.

SP: What are the long-term consequences of living day after day in these conditions?

AC: It's a really poor quality of life for children, especially. There's a picture that a caregiver took of her child that I think exemplifies so well the experience of children and their quality of life. The child is just lying on the floor in their home. The photo illustrates the child's lethargy and the boredom and the fact that caregivers often choose to have their children stay inside, because they can better control the indoor air quality. They can't necessarily control what's going to happen outside, but they can control indoor air quality.

The problem is, if the family doesn't have the resources to have an air filter to clean and purify the air, for instance, then what we've noticed in our research is that there can still be very poor indoor air quality, particularly when there's more extreme weather events like fires or dust storms.

With the research, I anticipated very poor quality of life for children. But what I understood less was that it also means poor quality of life for their families, and particularly for mothers, who are often the primary caregivers. It really affects their mental health and well-being.

SP: Currently, are there any measures in place to protect these families?

AC: There has been Assembly Bill 617 , which was a measure to engage members of the communities that are most affected by the Salton Sea environment in a process of mitigating the effects of the sea. From that, there have been a lot of community meetings. Years ago, I started to participate as one of the advisory board members. It became a bit frustrating — and I think this illustrates the history of frustration in this region — because government entities come in with resources and money. But it's very top-down, and often the community gets upset and frustrated because they don't see these agencies making changes in the community. There's a lot of talk and very little action.

There are also monies that have been dedicated to Salton Sea restoration, and there's been an ongoing conversation about a 10-year plan to mitigate the effects of the drying of the sea. But the focus has been primarily on wildlife, not human health. Only more recently have there been conversations about human health and the public health implications.

One of the caregivers in the study submitted this image of the medication their child needs to take daily. (Image credit: Trinidad et al (2026). CC BY 4.0 ) For individuals who have a specific diagnosis of asthma, they may qualify for retrofitting. That means they will receive money through their health insurance to be able to invest in improving their home. That might mean taking out carpet [which can capture dust], or maybe fortifying windows or doors ‪—‬ things like that. But it's a really small amount of money. It can help to a certain degree, but I think in this community, in particular, they may not always know how to navigate the healthcare system to get access to that type of resource. In addition, the most vulnerable people in this community don't have access to health insurance.

SP: What more could be done to improve people's quality of life in this community?

AC: We installed air-quality monitors in people's homes, and we spent a lot of time collaborating with communities in this region. Some live in apartment complexes; some live in single-family homes. But the majority live in mobile home parks, in which they're living in very old, dilapidated trailers. The land is dirt. It's an area that is very impoverished.

So, when I think about these communities, in particular, they can't protect themselves from the external environment. In terms of policies, [I wonder] how we can put money toward building housing that is not trailers and can really protect people from the dust. Right now, the wind is bringing dust into the homes. We need to find ways to actually keep the homes sealed.

This image submitted by one of the caregivers shows a blurred highway during a dust storm. (Image credit: Trinidad et al. BMC Environmental Science, 2026. CC BY 4.0 ) SP: The Salton Sea is a hotspot for lithium, and although there are currently no active lithium mines in the region, policymakers and private companies are investigating the sea's potential to host one. How might lithium mining affect the families you worked with?

AC: That conversation's been going on for several years now. At the moment, it's not as much a community concern, because there's been very little movement [to open mines]. There was a lot of action and movement about three or four years ago. But it's been a few years since they've been testing the prototype, and it doesn't seem like it's gone to scale, where they would have been able to commercialize it.

Initially, the community was quite upset, because it's just another example of the lands being exploited and other people benefiting. Typically, the beneficiaries are individuals who are not originally from the community and who have professional degrees. They get the resources, and they get to make decisions about the resources. Then, the conversation was, "Well, but if we have this type of business coming in, then it can create jobs." But we know that it creates jobs for individuals who have professional degrees, or they'll have to get some type of training; they're not jobs for farmworkers or individuals who are undocumented.

It takes a lot of water to do lithium mining , so that also has implications for the continuation of the shrinking of the Salton Sea.

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SP: Other lakes around the U.S., including Utah's Great Salt Lake, are shrinking and exposing toxic sediments that are then blown into residential areas. Do those drying lakes have similar effects on local communities?

AC: There is a film director [Abby Ellis from around the Great Salt Lake] who, I think two years ago, came to the Eastern Coachella Valley and met with myself and my team members. She said, "I want to get a sense of what's going on here, because this is essentially where we are going to be 10 or 15 years from now."

I had the opportunity to very briefly chat with her, but also view the trailer for her documentary. One of the distinctions between the communities surrounding the Great Salt Lake and the Salton Sea is the color of the skin of those living around these bodies of water. In Utah, it seems to be more so individuals who maybe are middle class, or have a certain access to resources — people who can have a political voice and organize and say, "We don't want this to happen." It will be interesting to see if there can be more change in communities where there are more affluent people living near these bodies of water.

This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.

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In raptures over Chapman’s Homer, Keats forgets

who discovered the Pacific—not stout Cortez

with eagle eyes but Balboa upon a peak in Darien.

Where he withdrew his handkerchief and saw

the death warrant drop of arterial blood,

a fate too deep for tears. Years, I was afraid

someone would refer to you in past tense,

and I’d sink like an animal past the dream

of evolution clean into disrepair. You lived—

this wasn’t that sort of tragedy. More like

a fairground after rain where heavy tents

had gauged large crevices. Franz said the silences

need to be loved, perhaps more than the words

that describe them in time. The dog cries

because it sets the human world in motion,

and I rise to stop the wailing, accusative at times.

__________________________________

Excerpted from If You Love That Lady: Poems . Copyright (c) 2026 by Maya C. Popa. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

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2027 Nissan Leaf Nismo debuts in Japan as the new flagship trim.

It gets a redesigned bodykit but drops the fancy LED taillights.

Pricing opens at $40,500 and climbs to $44,400 for the top B7 trim.

Nissan has launched a Nismo variant of the new Leaf in Japan, positioning it as the performance flagship of the range. The fully electric crossover picks up a more aggressive bodykit, sportier cabin touches, a sharper chassis setup, and reworked electronics, but it gains no extra horsepower and, stranger still, misses out on the 3D holographic taillights that mark the top of the lineup.

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Starting with the functional aero, the Leaf Nismo sets itself apart with a pronounced front splitter built around a “twin blade” design and Arteria Magma red inserts. Those red accents carry over to the mirror caps and the plastic cladding along the profile, which rides on a new set of lightweight 19-inch Enkei alloy wheels.

More: Nissan’s Most Expensive Leaf Yet Misses Out On A Key Feature

At the back, the Leaf Nismo borrows the smaller taillights from the entry-level Leaf instead of getting the cooler LEDs from the Platinum+ and Autech trims with their Z-inspired graphics. That is an odd call given where this car sits in the range and what it costs, since the flagship ends up wearing the cheapest lights in the family. The rear does at least get a unique ducktail spoiler and a lightly redesigned bumper with a red pinstripe to claw back some visual interest.

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Nismo

The color palette runs to four shades and two bi-tone finishes with a black roof, combined with a stealthy black and red interior theme. Inside, the cabin gains Nismo badges , contrasting stitching, custom graphics on the digital cockpit, matte suede fabric, and synthetic leather upholstery, along with a set of optional power-adjustable Recaro buckets.

No Power Boost

If you were expecting a power boost to match the aggressive styling, you will be disappointed. Nissan has carried over the electric powertrain from the standard Leaf without adding a single extra pony, so the bodykit writes a check the drivetrain never cashes. The entry-level B5 Nismo uses a 53 kWh battery with a 174 hp (130 kW / 177 PS) electric motor, while the range-topping B7 Nismo steps up to a 75 kWh battery and a 214 hp (160 kW / 217 PS) electric motor.

More: Good News, There’s A New Mitsubishi Eclipse. Bad News, It’s A Rebadged Nissan Leaf

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As with the standard model, the Leaf Nismo is available exclusively in FWD form, leaving the 4ORCE AWD system for the more expensive Ariya Nismo . Nissan engineers did add a bespoke Nismo drive mode for sharper accelerator response, along with Nismo-calibrated paddles that pull stronger regenerative braking, so the changes reach past the styling even if the output figures sit still.

Nismo

More importantly, the crossover also benefits from Nismo-specific chassis tuning, which is where the badge starts to justify itself. The modifications include new springs, anti-roll bars, swing-valve shock absorbers, reinforced subframe bushes, and a re-calibrated steering weight. Backing up the improved handling is a new set of 235/45 R19 Michelin Pilot Sport 5 performance tires.

Pricing And Market Launch

The Nissan Leaf Nismo is now available to order in Japan. Pricing starts at ¥6,601,100 ($40,500) for the B5 and climbs to ¥7,227,000 ($44,400) for the range-topping B7 with the Recaro bucket seat package.

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Nissan has yet to confirm whether the model will reach other markets such as Europe and North America, though it seems plausible given the automaker’s plans to expand its global Nismo lineup.

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TeamViewer report finds 71% of autonomous AI users set guardrails, but 61% wouldn't even use autonomous AI to begin with

The average worker spends 2+ hours per week validating AI output

Security and privacy could have the biggest impact

New TeamViewer research positions trust as the latest major barrier to AI adoption, with workers generally viewing the tool positively but struggling to hand over full independence to it.

Today, three in four workers use AI daily and only 3% say they don't see any noticeable workplace benefits, but nearly all (95%) respondents have at least some concern about AI operating without a human in the loop.

This struggle speaks to AI's evolution from generative to agentic, with workers most concerns about the autonomy of AI agents over AI's actual ability to produce results.

Agentic AI's biggest barrier is trust

Three in five (61%) said they'd prefer AI to take no independent action, with only around one-third (35%) willing for it to act autonomously on their behalf. Most of that group (71%) are only comfortable with AI handling defined tasks, confirming that safety and guardrails are a necessity.

As for trust's impact on productivity, more than half (56%) often or always verify AI outputs before relying on them, spending an average of two hours per week checking AI-generated work.

"The real opportunity is to use AI and automation to prevent disruption, improve digital experiences, and free people to focus on higher-value work," CEO Oliver Steil wrote.

Strong security and privacy protections would have the biggest impact in making autonomous AI more acceptable, followed by notifications before significant changes are made, restrictions on what information AI can access, agent activity monitoring tools and the option to reverse any actions.

"The next step is designing systems that know when to act, when to wait, and when to bring people into the decision," Chief Product and Technology Officer Mei Dent added.