Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

While oth­er parts of the world are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a white Christ­mas with snow, the Caribbean re­gion has been blan­ket­ed with thick Sa­ha­ran dust.

The thick dust prompt­ed a re­lease by the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) yes­ter­day, warn­ing of an un­healthy air qual­i­ty.

Mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions at Port-of-Spain, Point Lisas, and Ari­ma all record­ed the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in air qual­i­ty.

The EMA ad­vised, “Every­one, in par­tic­u­lar, sen­si­tive groups in­clud­ing old­er adults, chil­dren, and in­di­vid­u­als with heart or lung dis­ease, res­pi­ra­to­ry ail­ments, and al­ler­gies are strong­ly ad­vised to avoid pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion.”

The peak of the dust plume passed yes­ter­day but a mod­er­ate con­cen­tra­tion is still ex­pect­ed to­day.

The Min­istry of Health list­ed pos­si­ble symp­toms as­so­ci­at­ed with the dust, in­clud­ing a dry cough, sore throat, itchy eyes, sneez­ing and a run­ny nose.

The min­istry al­so ad­vised vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als to re­main in­doors if pos­si­ble and for those with pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions to keep their med­ica­tion and in­halers at hand. It al­so rec­om­mend­ed wear­ing masks when ven­tur­ing out­doors.

There were sev­er­al re­ports from phar­ma­cies across the coun­try, that al­ler­gy med­ica­tion was “sell­ing like hot bread,” as those af­fect­ed by the de­crease in air qual­i­ty at­tempt­ed to lessen or al­le­vi­ate their symp­toms.

The T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice re­port­ed that vis­i­bil­i­ty at the Pi­ar­co and Crown Point Sta­tions had been re­duced to two and four kilo­me­tres re­spec­tive­ly.

This is sig­nif­i­cant, as small­er air­craft that op­er­ate un­der Vi­su­al Flight Rules would have been ground­ed as they re­quire at least five kilo­me­tres of vis­i­bil­i­ty.

Na­tion­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion pro­jec­tions in­di­cate the dust con­cen­tra­tion will de­crease grad­u­al­ly, reach­ing min­i­mal lev­els by Fri­day, with no out­breaks ex­pect­ed for the re­main­der of the year.