Sa­ha­ran Dust is back with a bang!

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Agency’s (EMA) air qual­i­ty mon­i­tor­ing net­work, Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter, showed dust has been grad­u­al­ly in­creas­ing since last Fri­day. The Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) jumped to a mod­er­ate lev­el yes­ter­day, as the thick­est part of the dust plume ap­proached. 

For mod­er­ate air qual­i­ty, the EMA’s web­site in­di­cates, “Res­pi­ra­to­ry symp­toms are pos­si­ble in un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive in­di­vid­u­als; pos­si­ble ag­gra­va­tion of heart or lung dis­ease in peo­ple with car­diopul­monary dis­ease and old­er adults.”

The EMA fur­ther ad­vised, “un­usu­al­ly sen­si­tive peo­ple should con­sid­er re­duc­ing pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion.”

There are two main sources of da­ta to help lo­cal ex­perts fore­cast dust events—the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS) and the Na­tion­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Glob­al Mod­el­ling As­sim­i­la­tion Of­fice (NASA/GMAO). Both of these sources gen­er­al­ly agree the peak of this Sa­ha­ran Dust plume was ex­pect­ed from last night un­til ear­ly to­mor­row morn­ing (Christ­mas Day). Af­ter­wards, dust lev­els will grad­u­al­ly de­crease in­to De­cem­ber 27.

Sa­ha­ran Dust has re­ceived in­creas­ing at­ten­tion over the past few years, as the out­breaks/plumes be­come more no­tice­able and more eas­i­ly de­tect­ed (with de­vel­op­ments in tech­nol­o­gy).

Even though its con­cen­tra­tion de­creas­es as it makes its 4,700-kilo­me­tre jour­ney from the African coast to the Caribbean, the plumes can still have quite an ef­fect on our lo­cal en­vi­ron­ment. Ac­cord­ing to the TTMS, the dust de­creas­es air qual­i­ty and can have neg­a­tive im­pacts on health, in­clud­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry, car­dio­vas­cu­lar prob­lems, and eye in­fec­tions.

How­ev­er, NASA in­di­cates that the dust brings one ben­e­fit to the re­gion by fer­til­is­ing soils as it is high in alu­mi­nosil­i­cates and iron ox­ide.

As we tran­si­tion in­to the dry sea­son where these dust events be­come more fre­quent, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (in a re­lease dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 10, 2024) ad­vised peo­ple to take the fol­low­ing steps to avoid the harm­ful ef­fects of Sa­ha­ran dust:

Stay in­doors as much as pos­si­ble and when out­doors, wear a dust mask (KN95)

Utilise a HE­PA fil­ter in­doors to pu­ri­fy air in in­di­vid­ual rooms

Peo­ple who use med­ica­tions for pul­monary con­di­tions should car­ry them at all times and use as pre­scribed

At the first sign of dif­fi­cul­ty while breath­ing, seek pro­fes­sion­al med­ical ad­vice im­me­di­ate­ly

For less se­vere symp­toms, stan­dard al­ler­gy med­ica­tions such as an­ti­his­t­a­mines and steroid nasal sprays may al­le­vi­ate symp­toms.