Yellow dust

Back in the UK, we used to see the occasional day when the car was covered with a fine layer of dust after a rainy night. We were told that this was sand from the Sahara desert which had got drawn up into the atmosphere, and had blown across Europe and dropped down by precipitation. It was a rare occurrence, but an interesting one.

We have the same phenomenon here in Korea. Same mechanism - different desert. This comes from China’s Gobi desert, but is exacerbated by collection of airborne pollutants and deadly toxins, much if which is from China’s industrial centres. It gets carried along high in the atmosphere by the jet stream, and settles over the Korean peninsula and Japan for a few days, before being blown onwards.

It’s apparently seasonal too. Millions of tonnes of dust gets picked up from late February to May each year from dry winter weather conditions combined with the winds, and it’s getting worse each year.

Most of the time here, the visibility is usually poor at best, but gets much worse during one of these “storms” We have a river runs past the apartment, and the views are fantastic, given a nice clear day, but these are rare, due to the amount of dust in the air. I though it was just humidity, fog and weather conditions which were the reasons for the visibility, but it seems we are breathing this in most of the time. A lot of Korean folk’s wear surgical masks while out and about. I originally thought this was because it was considered impolite to spread your germs if you were sick with flu or something, but now I know different. Looking like Michael Jackson on a road trip might just keep you healthy! Schools are ordered to be closed during heaviest storms, as the children have low immunity to infections, and people are advised to keep all doors and windows shut. My earlier post about dust in the apartment now has nothing to do with us shedding our skin!

Korean Times has reported that to clean a jumbo jet took 6,000 gallons of water, 6 hours and at a cost of 3M Won (£1500)!

But we think we have it bad? I spoke to some of my colleagues in Shanghai, and they reckon we have good clean air here! They reported an air quality index of 500! The US considers 300 hazardous, and anything over 200 is unhealthy!

We’ll see how it improves after May is over and done with