Gill finds that dust storms cost US over $150 billion per year
Photo: Jay Miller / Unsplash
Tom Gill spoke to the New York Times about a series of severe dust storms that ripped across the Southwest and southern plains in March.
Speaking about his home of El Paso Texas, he told the Times, “it’s kind of the expected weather in spring, and we live with it. But to have this dust that is so thick that you can barely see a block or two down the road and it looks like Mars, it’s really unusual to have a dust storm that bad, much less three in less than three weeks’ time.”
Dust storms lead to dangerous driving conditions due to a lack of visibility. The Times reported that in March, “at least 20 people have died in car crashes amid low or nonexistent visibility.”
Tom has tried to quantify the cost of dust storms in economic terms, in an effort to ring the alarm about its huge societal cost. He co-authored a January 2025 publication that found a whopping $154 Billion price tag (which is likely an underestimate) associated with the impacts of dust in the United States.
"It might seem strange to think that tiny specks of dust could add up to such huge consequences," he told Phys.org. "This should be a wake-up call that blowing dust is a major expense and creates great societal harm."
This is the first study of its kind since the 1990s, and “this estimate quadruples the previous assessment and is higher than most other US weather and climate disasters.
“Our estimate, while conservative, reveals that the economic burden of wind erosion is substantial and investment in dust mitigation could yield large economic benefits,” the authors wrote.
"The Dust Bowl in the 1930s was economically and socially devastating and happened because of poor land management and agricultural practices during a maor drought," Gill told Eos. "We should see it as a warning to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future."
