The heavy dust that was carried across the nation by a cold front from central China and Inner Mongolia on Saturday began to subside yesterday, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said.
The nation’s air quality is expected to return to normal levels today or tomorrow, it said.
“Because of precipitation, as of 4pm today [yesterday], the hourly floating particle density had dropped to below 150 micrograms per cubic meter in all cities and counties in the nation except for Kinmen,” said Chu Yu-chi (朱雨其), director-general of the EPA’s department of environmental monitoring and information management.
On Saturday, the nation was enveloped by the heaviest dust storm from China since the EPA began recording. The EPA said that 69 out of the nation’s 76 air quality monitoring stations measured Pollutant Standard Indexes of over 100, which meant that the air quality had reached an “unhealthy” level.
“The heavy dust first arrived in northern Taiwan where the hourly floating particle concentrations shot to 900 micrograms per cubic meter at one point. On Saturday morning, the dust moved to central and southern Taiwan, increasing the region’s hourly floating particle concentration to 700 micrograms per cubic meter,” Chu said.
The dust hit southern Taiwan yesterday morning and raised Kaohsiung and Pingtung’s hourly floating particle concentration to around 500 micrograms per cubic meter, he said.
Responding to a report by the Chinese-language Liberty Times’ (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) that the EPA had failed to warn people of the heavy dust beforehand, Chu said that because the dust level increased 10-fold in a mere hour on Saturday morning, it would have been difficult to predict such an occurrence with its current technology and equipment.
However, Chu said that because China gets about 10 dust storms per year, two or three of which affect Taiwan, the EPA is considering announcing dust storms in China and general weather trends — such as cold fronts that may carry dust across the strait — to the public in the future.
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