The rotten egg smell at the Salton Sea isn’t just a nuisance. It can make people sick

Residents around the Salton Sea have long complained of respiratory ailments from particulate pollution that wafts from its shoreline.

Now UCLA researchers have identified another air pollutant that could be sickening people in communities near the inland lake: hydrogen sulfide.

That’s a gas from decaying, organic matter that produces a rotten egg smell and is associated with eye irritation, headaches, nausea and other symptoms. In a pair of reports released last week, the Latino Policy & Politics Institute at UCLA described how algal blooms produce the gas in the water, and how it wafts across nearby neighborhoods.

“Communities that live next to the shore or within a mile of the shore experience exposure to hydrogen sulfide,” said Consuelo A. Márquez, who authored the reports with Alej