In this image, dust mingles with clouds over northeastern China and the
Korean Peninsula. The dust cloud appears as a pale tan, slightly
lighter than the underlying landscape. Dust clouds obscure the view of
the city of Beijing.

According to Reuters News Service, the dust resulted in a rare
phenomenon in South Korea: yellow snow. Snow laced with dust can pose a
health hazard, and the Korean weather bureau issued a dust warning.

In northeastern China and Mongolia, the storm posed the usual hazards
to respiratory tracts and eyes

Dust Storm over Eastern China

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/New...3?img_id=17214

Anyone happen to know how it is an health hazard? I know you're not
supposed to eat the yellow snow but that is ridiculous.

Weatherlawyer wrote:
In this image, dust mingles with clouds over northeastern China and the
Korean Peninsula. The dust cloud appears as a pale tan, slightly
lighter than the underlying landscape. Dust clouds obscure the view of
the city of Beijing.

According to Reuters News Service, the dust resulted in a rare
phenomenon in South Korea: yellow snow. Snow laced with dust can pose a
health hazard, and the Korean weather bureau issued a dust warning.

Gives new meaning to don't eat yellow snow.

Scott

Kåre V wrote:
Weatherlawyer:

I seem to remember reading that the wind brings a lot of pollution from
the east of the Med over to the Atlantic where it goes north to Scandinavia.

In the 80s we talked a lot about it in school. We were angry of the
British to. :-) Now we know it isnt that bad any longer. Scandinavia and
Norway has very clean air now, and the trees doesnt die like they did.

I think you will find that the block destruction of trees in those days
was of such a pattern as to rule out acid rain.

Which rain, if it were ever acid would have become so -so it was also
alledged, from the burning of fossil fuels.

Said fossils once having been vegetation.

Kind of like eating your cake and still having it.

What I imagine happened was that the forestry workers were spraying
their plantations with weed killers designed to halt the growth of
weeds around the newly planted trees. Either mismangement or the
systemic poisoning itself, was more likely responsible for the
destruction of the trees.

See if you can find aerial photographs of the damage these forests
sustained. You will see patterns that just would not -could not- be
made by falling rain.

Another point to note is that the experts, whenever they were
identifying the acid, referred to it as sulphuric acid. Any schoolboy
knows it could not have been sulphuric acid. How come the experts never
corrected themselves?

And one more for the third witness:

When I used to work on council estates, (large blocks of streets of low
cost/rent housing) whenever we were at an house where the householder
burned coal or (especially) wood, the gutters would be vibrant with
life. The roof tiles would be covered in lichens and even mosses.

When we were at someone's with a cleaner burning fuel, say with gas or
oil central heating, the roofs were usually barren and the gutters
seldom needed cleaning.

It was around this time that governments everywhere woke up to the
perils of chemicals such as lindane (not sure of the spelling) the same
basic product as was widely used in timber preservatives, weedkillers
and various other Tabun related chemicals.

The same product by and large, that is still killing the farmers of
Chimpland's first Iraq:
VietNam.

You might want to try checking out what the forestry is like in regions
where they dumped the hydrazine and Agent Orange in the USA. (Probably
still secret, that one though.) There was talk of it on usenet groups
but it seems to have magically disappeared from all the servers.