The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) is ad­vis­ing there is a mod­er­ate con­cen­tra­tion of Sa­ha­ran dust present in the at­mos­phere, and as such, per­sons who are sen­si­tive to this change in air qual­i­ty should take nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions.

“High lev­els of Sa­ha­ran dust have a greater ef­fect on per­sons who al­ready have lung con­di­tions, like asth­ma. These per­sons should stay in­doors, when pos­si­ble, and have their res­cue in­haler with them at all times,” a re­lease from the Min­istry of Health has ad­vised.

At present, the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) for San Fer­nan­do and south­ern parts of Trinidad is MOD­ER­ATE at 88; for Point Lisas, it is MOD­ER­ATE at 56; and for Port of Spain, it is MOD­ER­ATE at 53. 

This means res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms are pos­si­ble in un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive in­di­vid­u­als.  In ad­di­tion, there could be pos­si­ble ag­gra­va­tion of heart or lung dis­ease with car­diopul­monary dis­ease and old­er adults.  Un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive peo­ple are ad­vised to con­sid­er re­duc­ing pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion.

AQI update courtesy Environmental Management Authority (EMA).

For peo­ple in To­ba­go, the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) is re­port­ed to be GOOD at 4, so peo­ple can safe­ly en­joy their out­door ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ac­cord­ing to the Met Ser­vice, in­creased Sa­hara Dust events will be com­bin­ing with less rain­fall than usu­al dur­ing the 2022 Dry Sea­son, with the dri­est pe­ri­od ex­pect­ed to be be­tween Feb­ru­ary and April. 

In its out­look for this year, the Met Ser­vice warned that in­crease in sur­face dry­ness as the sea­son pro­gress­es will in­crease the po­ten­tial for bush/grass/for­est and land­fill fires, which can de­te­ri­o­rate the air qual­i­ty and stress per­sons with sen­si­tive res­pi­ra­to­ry con­di­tions.

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About the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI)

The Air Qual­i­ty In­dex is a num­ber used by gov­ern­ment agen­cies to com­mu­ni­cate to the pub­lic how pol­lut­ed the air cur­rent­ly is or how pol­lut­ed it is fore­cast to be­come. As the AQI in­creas­es, an in­creas­ing­ly large per­cent­age of the pop­u­la­tion is like­ly to ex­pe­ri­ence in­creas­ing­ly se­vere ad­verse health ef­fects.