The weekend has seen some of this year’s worst air pollution hit the entire country, with fine (hazardous) dust recorded many times above permissible levels. Sore throats and runny eyes are not the only effects from the attack of the fine yellow dust blowing from the Gobi Desert through China’s industrial heartland. People ― children and adults ― have been seen wearing what look like surgical masks, bravely roaming the streets of Seoul underneath sickly yellowish skies that even dulled the spring sunlight.
The government has only done half the work on a critical fight against what is emerging as one of the country’s most serious health threats. The accomplished half is the rather efficient but still unreliable forecast system.
The unfinished other half starts with the studied adverse effects on public health.
The current forecast does not relay what harmful chemicals or biological elements a particular attack of fine dust, often aggravated by seasonal yellow dust from China at this time of the year, contains and therefore what particular protection people should take, other than the generalized advice of staying indoors, wearing masks and drinking plenty of water.
Absent on a more critical note is research into the long-term effects. The fine dust and yellow wind are, naturally, an anathema to respiratory organs. Throat colds or sinusitis are only immediate symptomatic diseases. Then, what could be the effects from severe exposure over long periods to heavy metals that may be blown over and breathed by the public? There are also bound to be differences in impact between healthy people and vulnerable ones, such as respiratory patients, for instance. Environment Minister Yoon Seong-kyu recently indicated a need for such studies but without a sense of urgency, acknowledging the lack of health impact research.
These studies should be the first step in dealing with the aggravated health hazard issue, by finding the exact social costs of these dust attacks and by breaking them down into causes and medical bills. Right now, responsibilities for which parties are causing what proportion of the bad dust remain fuzzy.
It is suspected that China is the main culprit because currents of wind blow industrial dust from there to the Korean Peninsula. The cooperation China is willing to extend to Korea for forecasts, and encouragement for Korean firms to participate in its environmental cleanup efforts to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, may be seen as an indirect admission of its guilt. They are still circumstantial. The Korean government has failed to press Beijing, with Minister Yoon saying that cooperation and business opportunities are ahead of other priorities.
Other usual suspects are local smokestack industries ― steel and petrochemicals ― as well as vehicles, which should be put under stricter scrutiny at a state level, not alone in terms of abiding faithfully by the Paris global agreement to limit carbon footprints and limit temperature rises. By taking these fundamental steps, we may have an overall blueprint to reverse our losing fight before the dirty dust turns into a bigger killer. Don’t forget that not just we, but our children, have skin in it.