China sees a bad year for spring’s yellow dust

BEIJING - China’s environmental agency had some bad news for Koreans about this spring’s annual “yellow dust” attacks, saying that the 2007 version of the dust storms, which are a nuisance to all but a serious health threat to some, may be worse than normal.
“Warm, dry weather continued throughout this winter, and the sandstorms of this spring will be worse than in normal years,” Shi Hanmin, head of the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau, told the Beijing News.
China’s west and inner Mongolian regions are the origin of the yellow dust storms, and those areas have had almost no snow this winter, Mr. Shi said. According to experts, in years when there has been more than 10 days of snow in those areas, the following spring’s dust storms are muted. A lack of moisture in the ground makes the storms worse than average.
Last year, Beijing endured 17 days of the choking dust storms. Environmental authorities in the city said that air pollution in general, including those dust storms, would continue to worsen over the next five years.
Kwon Byong-hyon, a former Korean ambassador to China, heads a group called Korea-China Future Forest, which is trying to plant enough trees in Inner Mongolia to have an effect on the desertification that fuels the annual storms. He called the problem a man-made disaster, not a natural one, and quoted estimates that the dust causes 7 trillion won ($7.4 billion) in damage annually in South Korea.

By Chang Se-jeong(JoongAng Ilbo) / Ser Myo-ja (Staff Writer) [myoja@joongang.co.kr]