Dust extinction is generally the least tractable systematic uncertainty in astronomy, and particularly in supernova science. Often in the past, studies have used the equivalent width of Na I D absorption measured from low-resolution spectra as proxies for extinction, based on tentative correlations that were drawn from limited data sets. We show here, based on 443 low-resolution spectra of 172 Type Ia supernovae for which we have measured the dust extinction as well as the equivalent width of Na I D, that the two barely correlate. We briefly examine the causes for this large scatter that effectively prevents one from inferring extinction using this method.
Download