China’s dust is blowing here

Associated Press

SEATTLE — A big dust storm in China is likely to cross the Pacific and could be visible in the United States, a researcher at the University of Washington-Bothell says.

Dan Jaffe, an environmental chemistry professor, expects to be able to detect the dust in a week or two.

"Based on everything we know — the wind patterns, the forecasts from various groups that are doing computer simulations of the dust — the answer is yes, this stuff is going to be coming across in the next few days," Jaffe said Thursday.

The UW has a monitoring station on the Olympic Peninsula and will take samples by small airplane on flights out of Everett’s Paine Field.

Jaffe says the dust is unlikely to be a pollution problem in itself. But it adds to the existing pollution. In addition, it demonstrates that other pollutants from Asia could be a problem for people living 5,000 miles away.

"The dust is not the most toxic ingredient of things that are coming over. We are measuring other pollutants, including carbon monoxide, ozone, hydrocarbons, mercury," Jaffe said. And his research team is starting to measure persistent organic pollutants in cooperation with researchers at Oregon State University.

The wind-whipped storm from the Gobi Desert has made life miserable for millions of people in Beijing and other parts of China. It’s an annual problem that is worsening because of deforestation and drought.

By the time it reaches the United States, the China dust may make skies look washed out or milky, Jaffe said.

"We’ve got our eyes on it. I can’t predict the future. I can’t tell you how bad it’s going to be or how much is going to be here in five days," he said. But the current research will aid in predicting the effect of future dust storms.

Jaffe says the biggest previous dust storm to cross the Pacific was in 1998.