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Atmosphere
Special Issues
Impact of Desert Dust on Air Quality and Human Health
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Impact of Desert Dust on Air Quality and Human Health

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality and Human Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (17 March 2022) | Viewed by 4081

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Christel Bouet

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), Avenue du Général de Gaulle, CEDEX, 94010 Creteil, France
Interests: wind erosion; desert dust; in-situ measurements; regional modelling; Sahel

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Desert dust is one of the most abundant aerosols in the atmosphere: according to the latest IPCC report, it represents about 30% of the total atmospheric aerosol burden. Desert dust is emitted by wind erosion of bare or sparsely vegetated soils, i.e., mainly from the arid and semi-areas of the world (from the Sahara to the Chinese and Central Asian deserts, especially). As a consequence, the population living in the vicinity of these regions can be exposed to very high levels of mineral dust concentrations. Meanwhile, desert dust has a residence time in the atmosphere of about one week so that it can be transported over long distances and impact air quality throughout its course in the atmosphere. Desert dust covers a large size spectrum, ranging from some tenths of µm to 40 or 50 µm in diameter. These particles can be inhaled and induce various impacts on human health. Finally, desert dust can also transport other species or be coated with reactive species that may increase the negative impact on human health.

The aim of this Special Issue is to underline the impact of desert dust on air quality and human health throughout the world. To do so, this Special Issue welcomes original results from aerosol monitoring (both in situ and using remote sensing), numerical modeling, epidemiological studies, as well as review papers.

Dr. Christel Bouet
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • dust storms
  • particulate matter
  • air quality
  • environmental impact assessment
  • In situ measurements
  • remote sensing
  • numerical modeling
  • forecasting

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 1135 KiB  
Article
Associations between Dust Exposure and Hospitalizations in El Paso, Texas, USA
by Estrella Herrera-Molina, Thomas E. Gill, Gabriel Ibarra-Mejia and Soyoung Jeon
Atmosphere 2021, 12(11), 1413; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12111413 - 27 Oct 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3414
Abstract
The Southwestern USA has been identified as one of the most persistent dust-producing regions of North America, where exposure to inhalable particulate matter (PM10) originating from desertic landscape during dust events/dust exposures (DEs) can reach hazardous levels. El Paso, Texas’s ambient [...] Read more.
The Southwestern USA has been identified as one of the most persistent dust-producing regions of North America, where exposure to inhalable particulate matter (PM10) originating from desertic landscape during dust events/dust exposures (DEs) can reach hazardous levels. El Paso, Texas’s ambient air has reached hazardous levels of PM10 from dust with near zero visibility due to these natural events originating in the surrounding Chihuahuan Desert. The aim of this study was to investigate whether dust exposures in El Paso (generally acute, short-term exposures from nearby source areas) are associated with significant increases in hospitalizations on the day of the exposure and up to seven days afterwards. Using a Poisson regression, it was found that the relative risks of hospitalizations due to a variety of conditions were associated with dust exposures (through increases of 100 μg/m3 maximum hourly PM10 and/or increases of 4.5 m/s maximum hourly wind speed) in El Paso County, Texas between 2010 and 2014. Valley fever, coronary atherosclerosis, genitourinary diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, injury and poisoning, circulatory system conditions, respiratory system diseases, births, septicemia, Associated Diseases (the aggregation of hospital admissions for all causes, each associated with at least 5% of hospitalizations), and all ICD-9 admissions were significantly positively associated with dust exposures, indicated from higher to lower significant risk, at different lag periods after exposure. These findings, showing that an association does exist between dust exposures and hospitalizations, have important implications for residents of the world’s dryland cities. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Impact of Desert Dust on Air Quality and Human Health)
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