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Sunday, February 23, 2025

Health Ministry advises precaution amid Saharan dust

by

Chester Sambrano
387 days ago
20240202
There is a significant concentration of Saharan dust present in the atmosphere causing reduced air quality.  Photo taken @ Trincity by Kay-Marie Fletcher

There is a significant concentration of Saharan dust present in the atmosphere causing reduced air quality. Photo taken @ Trincity by Kay-Marie Fletcher

Chester Sam­bra­no

The Min­istry of Health is ad­vis­ing peo­ple to take pre­cau­tions as a re­sult of Sa­ha­ran Dust.

The Min­istry said in a state­ment is­sued on Jan­u­ary 31, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice in­di­cat­ed that the high­est con­cen­tra­tion of Sa­ha­ran Dust is ex­pect­ed from Jan­u­ary 31 to Feb­ru­ary 3.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, read­ings tak­en at the EMA’s Mon­i­tor­ing Sta­tions at 9:00 am on Feb­ru­ary 1 stat­ed that the in­crease in Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter, which is at­trib­uted to Sa­ha­ran dust, has reg­is­tered as un­healthy on the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI), with the Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter lev­els rang­ing be­tween 152-156.

The Min­istry of Health said it notes that Sa­ha­ran dust may con­tain var­i­ous par­ti­cles which can de­crease the qual­i­ty of air and may cause symp­toms such as a dry cough, sore throat, itchy, wa­tery eyes, sneez­ing and run­ny nose.

It said high lev­els of Sa­ha­ran dust may al­so ex­ac­er­bate ill­ness in peo­ple at high risk of res­pi­ra­to­ry com­pli­ca­tions in­clud­ing per­sons with pre-ex­ist­ing lung con­di­tions such as asth­ma and or bron­chi­tis, per­sons with pre-ex­ist­ing heart dis­ease, the el­der­ly, and chil­dren.

The Min­istry said vul­ner­a­ble in­di­vid­u­als may choose to stay in­doors where ap­pro­pri­ate to min­i­mize the ef­fects, par­take in less stren­u­ous out­door ac­tiv­i­ty e.g. walk­ing in­stead of run­ning, and those with pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions are ad­vised to en­sure that their res­cue in­haler is with them at all times and wear a mask where ap­pro­pri­ate.

It said while peo­ple may ex­pe­ri­ence symp­toms dur­ing the days of a Sa­hara dust event, these symp­toms should de­crease as the dust lev­els re­duce.

The Min­istry of Health said peo­ple who ex­pe­ri­ence se­vere short­ness of breath (dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing), per­sis­tent fever (for more than 2-3 days) or a se­vere wors­en­ing of a pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tion should seek ur­gent med­ical at­ten­tion.

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