Saharan dust pushes air quality to unhealthy levels

A thick plume of Sa­ha­ran dust has pushed air qual­i­ty to un­healthy lev­els in Port of Spain, Point Lisas and San Fer­nan­do. 

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) record­ed the lev­els at 8 a.m. to­day.

The dust has dri­ven up con­cen­tra­tions of par­tic­u­late mat­ter (PM), with the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) rang­ing be­tween 164 and 177 at the af­fect­ed mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions. At these lev­els, the air pos­es health risks to every­one—es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble groups such as chil­dren, old­er adults and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry or heart con­di­tions.

The EMA is strong­ly ad­vis­ing those in sen­si­tive groups to avoid pro­longed or heavy ex­er­tion out­doors.

Trinidad and To­ba­go cur­rent­ly has six Am­bi­ent Air Qual­i­ty Mon­i­tor­ing Sta­tions—five in Trinidad and one in To­ba­go—which pro­vide re­al-time da­ta through the Na­tion­al Am­bi­ent Air Qual­i­ty Mon­i­tor­ing Net­work.