Dust storm from Mongolia reaches across Pacific with Chinese pollution

The Associated Press
A satellite image shows a mustard-colored dust cloud moving eastward, from mainland Asia over the Sea of Japan.

DENVER - A dust storm from Mongolia is dispersing dust from the Gobi Desert and industrial pollution from China across a quarter of the United States mainland, an atmospheric scientist said Tuesday.

The whitish haze has been seen from Calgary, Alberta, to Arizona to Aspen, where weekend levels of particulate - matter that reduces visibility and can cause respiratory problems - quadrupled over the previous weekend.

"We normally have our worst pollution days in February, during the busiest part of the ski season when lots of people are on the road," said Lee Cassin, director of Aspen's Department of Environmental Health.

"We had the same kind of haze when Mount St. Helen's erupted, but the particulate didn't come down to the ground level as much."

Particulate levels measured 58 millionths of a gram per cubic meter of air in Aspen, compared with 14 millionths of a gram a week earlier.

Officials at the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, Calif., and NASA confirmed the haze began as a dust storm over China.

"This storm is a godsend to pollution researchers. People are finally realizing that what they have been saying for years is true.

"Pollution from Asia is being carried across the oceans," said Russ Schnell, director of observatory operations for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder.

Oceanographer Gene Feldman, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said aircraft have been monitoring particulates in the dust clouds.

"At one time, this dust cloud was bigger than Japan," he said.

Schnell said the cloud will reach the East Coast but should dissipate within the next several days.

In late 1998, scientists first claimed to have documented the travel of industrial pollution from China to the United States, where it spiked some pollution levels as high as two-thirds of federal health standards.

It is not the first time such a storm has been tracked all the way to the United States, but it is unusual for the conditions to be so visible to the naked eye, the two experts said.

Officials are advising people at risk, the elderly, children and those with respiratory problems, to stay indoors if they notice any effect from the pollution.