Yow, check out today’s scary KH story on this spring’s prospects for the goddamn Yellow Dust. It certainly has started much earlier than previous years, and has already been severe twice that I noticed. I have really come to hate it, and wonder how much time outdoors during an attack is the equivalent is smoking up a carton of cigarettes…
I find it weird that the story says ”The year’s first yellow dust hit Seoul Wednesday,” — wait a minute, i’m awfully sure that there was a very bad attack of it last Saturday the 10th, the wife and i drove down south through it for hours and it was unmistakable; and the first one of the year was somewhere around a week before that — can anyone else here back me up on that or give an alternate version?
I am reminded by the warning-predictions a couple of years ago that if it continues to get worse, the entire western side of the Korean Peninsula will become medically unsafe for human habitation for at least two months every year — wonder what that’s going to mean for the 30 million or so of us who live here…? Seoul real estate might not be your best bet.
Nobody seems optimistic that there is any practical way to stop this from getting much worse, or even get it under control, as northern China continues to dry up :-(
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Another thing that worries me is how quickly air filters wear out here. I can not seem to find anything better than the over-priced Samsung air filters to run in the house but the smaller machines with the removable HEPA-class filters work well — except for the cost of buying a new filter every two to three months.
I really wish I could find a more effective air filter in Korea.
Maybe these “ionic” air cleaners (no paper filter needed) have been on the market long enough now that you can get them for less than a full month’s wages:
http://www.discount-ionic.com/.....-breeze-1/
Assuming you can get it shipped to Korea for a reasonable price. And even with the deep discount, I don’t know if they are worth it or not; here’s the supposed “down” side:
http://www.aircleaners.com/sharperimage2.phtml
Though it looks like this url is from a competitor, they seem to be citing “neutral” sources such as consumer reports and CNN.
My wife and I went to Daegu on Jan 16. Driving back in the late afternoon, the sky was an ugly grayish-brown. My wife said it was hwang-sa, the yellow dust, and it was with us for most of the trip from Daegu to Pyeongtaek.
There are days in Seoul when there’s a relatively blue sky but the hwangsa still hurts your throat.
Check this out — yellow dust in Arizona: http://www.lakepowell.net/asiandust.htm
michael,
Great link. Thanks!
A weekend ago and two weekeends ago? Yeah, I can back you up on that Robert. I first noticed the horizon was developping a brownish hue about 3 weeks ago. My son sinuses have been bothering me since and the doctor finally clued in this week that my son’s cough, which he first got 2 weeks ago, isn’t due to a cold.
As Michael was saying, the dust doesn’t have to be visible to be harmful…which makes me wonder, “When did it really begin arriving and why wasn’t it reported?”.
Correction…My sinuses…
I thought the first reports of the yellow dust were in the middle of January, according to this article. And, I also thought I remembered one of the military publications running an article about a yellow-dust day earlier than that. I can’t find a link, though.
My question, for those of you who’ve been around longer, is how do you find out about the “alerts” that are mentioned in the story. I don’t usually watch TV in the mornings, but maybe TV weather reports? Do they carry bulletins about the air quality? The newspapers all seem to only report this after the fact.
Yes, i was quite sure that it had started much earlier than last Wednesday, thanks for the confirmations.
I have never found any way of getting advance warning on these attacks, the weather websites don’t warn of them and even while they’re happening just say “hazy” which could mean anything, Korea has a natural humidity-haze much of the year. I only know there’s Yellow Dust going on when i step outside and see/smell/taste it, like Saturday the 10th when it was really distinctive and obvious. I really wish there was a way that we could all be warned… tho it would do little good; if ya gotta go out, then ya gotta.
Elgin, i also have to buy air filters every three months, now have two machines running in my house 24/7, might get one for my office. I don’t know of any air- cleaning machines where you don’t have to change the filters once in awhile. Those “Ionic” air filters sure sound attractive, but then the Consumer Reports articles say they don’t work and are even harmful, so i wouldn’t buy one — CR is generally quite objective and reliable as a source on products…
Cat,
That was industrial pollutant, not that dreaded ‘yellow dust’.
Do they have medical advisory warnings on AFKN? I would be interested to know how bad they say this is. I would also like to know what days they say are the ones not to go outside.
iwshim,
Just take my word: pretty much every day until April.
I don’t think that’s true, Someguy — there are better and worse days, and the better ones (far majority) are not unhealthy to be out walking. Or do you have any better meterological info to the contrary, that you could share with us…?
My throat and sinuses don’t lie. I’m not over sensitive because they never bothered me in Canada.
And depending where you live, the air is bad year-round - anyone who knows me knows I’m biased against Seoul but this is true: When we moved up there, we took along all our plants that my wife had growing out on our balcony. Over time, even with plenty of sunlight, they all became sickly, or died. After 16 months, we moved back down to Songtan, and in a few months, the surviving plants turned back to a lush green. Now some people believe that plants react to human speech so it could be that my constant bitching about Seoul while living there caused them to go downhill but I’ll stick with my bad air theory :).
I blogged about the dust during the worst of the 2006 episode:
http://www.sperwerslog.com/ind.....llow_sand/
The entry has some good satellite photography that indicates just how bad this can be.
It also has some links to informational sites and to the Korean Metereological Association site that at least used to track this stuff; I can’t find the links there any more.
However 18th Med Com maintains a real-time advisory at:
http://www.seoul.amedd.army.mi.....efault.asp.
It’s targeted at the various AFK base areas, but since there are bases in so many areas it gives pretty good coverage. The opening page is for Yongsan/Seoul.
Here’s an interesting article from Stars & Stripes that explains why the Korean weather services don’t generally produce warnings about winter dust storms.
http://stripes.com/article.asp.....chive=true
Here’s the money quote (slightly rearranged and with empahsis added to highlight the lunacy):
The yellow dust in Seoul IS early, and much is worst than in the years past. I am not sure what can be done short of asking our environmentally sensitive neighbors to plant trees. I am more than certain that they are concerned about this problem and would go out of their way to remedy it. The Chinese want the Koreans to be healthy and happy so that they can sell them their garlic. I am sure this is all a misunderstanding.
I think your sarcasm is quite misplaced — China IS highly concerned about this problem, because it suffers from it much worse than we do. These dust storms are truly horrific and deadly in their capital Beijing. Some experts have warned that Beijing itself could get half-buried by giant sand dunes if the expansion of the deserts isn’t halted soon.
China is spending a huge amount of money on tree-planting and such — but it’s not doing much good so far. Nothing much can be done about the basic root cause of this, which is that some 500 million people are living in an huge area (the Greater Yellow River Basin) that has sufficient water for perhaps 100 million at most. All possible sources of water are already being used, and underground levels are dropping fast. But they’ve kept building golf courses, new apartment complexes and water-using factories. Drought has become ordinary, less evaporation leading to less rain as a negative-spiraling cycle. Planting tree-lines or even entire forests on the rapidly moving borders of the Gobi Desert isn’t going to change this.
If there’s any good answer or plan that’s going to improve the situation any time soon, i haven’t heard of it.
So whadda we gonna do, we who live here in western Korea…?
Thanks for the good info, others — especially Sperwer for that US Army monitoring page http://www.seoul.amedd.army.mi.....efault.asp
(tho your link there doesn’t work due to the period you put on the end). That will be extremely useful…
I was just out walking around campus this afternoon with a friend, climbed up to the peak of the mountain behind; the sky was blue and all looked fine, we said “there’s no yellow dust today”. But now i see on that U.S. Army site that Yongsan was reporting a small spike of almost 100 ppm this afternoon (bad, tho not nearly at the stay-indoors levels starting at 300 ppm). That’s weird, i couldn’t detect it at all — so i see what Someguy is talking about, i guess.
That strikes article says that the April 8th 2006 attack reached 2,353 ppm — WOW! I remember that evening well, how horrible it was — the wife and i went out in it, as there was a party that just couldn’t be missed; we got bad headaches and were coughing right through the next day…
I will believe it when I see it. Yes they hate the dust; however they care not of the carcinogens that use said dust as its media to travel. China wants the profit without the environmental responsibility. Don’t think for a second that the tree planting is going to stop the pollution; they are two very separate issues. My sarcasm is aptly placed.
Nomad,
Unless you live along the coast in Kangwon, its safe to say that the air quality isn’t all that great in your town. There is always this lingering smell of dust where I live, and the air seems a bit thin, as if it lacks oxygen.
Well, i can testify that the air on the east side of Jiri-san is excellent, even when Seoul is suffering yellow dust…
railwaycharm, nobody ever said that any tree planting is going to stop any carcinogenic pollution; we have only been talking about the Dust itself here, your own sarcastic comment 18 doesn’t mention any pollution. What i said was, the Chinese government is frantically planting trees to slow down the increase of the dust, but even that is not likely to succeed in doing much good. Most unfortunately.
Your new contention that “the Chinese” do not care about the carcinogenic pollution of their air would be hard to support, i think. Common people and journalists have expressed grave concern over it, and the government has made several major statements and launched several major initiatives in the past few years to deal with it (especially in Beijing with the Summer Olympics coming). The top Chinese authorities are not willing to do what it would take to stop the pollution at the cost of slowing down their economic growth, however. If *that’s* what you mean by “they want the profit” then nobody would argue.
The Chinese government is far from unique in that, of course. Having been born and raised in America’s industrial midwest, Detroit to be exact, i do have plenty of gut-level experience about governments not willing to slow down economic growth in order to quickly resolve severe pollution problems…
railwaycharm, nobody ever said that any tree planting is going to stop any carcinogenic pollution; we have only been talking about the Dust itself here, your own sarcastic comment 18 doesn’t mention any pollution. What i said was, the Chinese government is frantically planting trees to slow down the increase of the dust, but even that is not likely to succeed in doing much good. Most unfortunately.
Are you for real? That is the whole reason we EXPATS are concerned is the fact that the dust is poisonous. The thread mentions pollution and everyone who paid attention recognized the real danger. Even the most rabid liberal must have an environmental bent. You are baseless.
Sorry for the poor posting! You catch my drift!
Too much sho chu….
Apparently.
The dioxin, heavy metals and etc in the yellow dust make it much worse and are of grave concern, sure. But even without those additions we expats (and the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese & etc) would surely be worried about the yellow dust, because it causes or aggravates asthma, allergies, dry skin and irritations in itself, screws up machinery, befouls water supplies and more. The pollutants are far from the sole concern here; they merely worsen our concerns.
ANYway, there was another fairly bad attack yesterday, when i hit the street about 5:30 pm i could tell right away. Army site says it hit 175 ppm and then about 165 ppm in the late afternoon. Hovering just below 100 all day today. SHIT. As a lifelong asthmatic, i have major concerns about my future here, all of our futures here.
Seoul for five days. Taipei for five days. Bangkok for five days. Then it was back to San Francisco International Airport. I got into that sucky Chrysler rental car and drove over to the coast. I submerged myself in that icy-cold blue water three times, tasted the salt on my lips, and breathed that fresh ocean air.
“Hello, boring heaven,” I thought to myself. “I love the crazy hell that is Seoul, Taipei, and Bangkok, but I can only take it in small doses.”
One of the surfer dudes tried to help me out. “Hey, bro. Nobody swims without a wet suit in February. The water’s too cold.” I didn’t respond. I didn’t have to.
(See http://www.v-2.org/displayArti.....le_num=602 for origins of boring heaven / crazy hell terminology.)