Desert Sand and Dust Storms and Desert Dust Episodes: Major Patterns to be Accounted for to Protect the Health of Exposed Population: A Review

Abstract

Sources of desert dust, atmospheric transport, recorded concentrations of atmospheric particulate matter (PM), physical, compositional, and biological characteristics, and likely direct and indirect impacts on air quality impairment are reviewed without a systematic, but with an expert approach. The aim is to offer information necessary to protect the health of exposed populations in the dust-emitting and dust-receptor regions. This review corroborates the complexity of the process by which air quality is impaired during dust episodes, the mixture of components that PM might contain during dust episodes, the differences between dust emission and reception regions, and the interplay of indirect effects (thinning the boundary layer; concentration of local pollution; interactions with anthropogenic pollutants). Based on these dust episode patterns, we recommend the implementation of alert systems to protect the more vulnerable members of the population and highlight a number of recommendations for air quality monitoring during such episodes to provide adequate data sets to rigorously evaluate health outcomes associated with dust exposure in emitting and receptor regions and the possible causes for these effects.