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By ROBERT WELLER, Associated Press Writer
DENVER (AP)
- A dust storm that started in Mongolia and picked up industrial
pollution from China has spread a haze across a quarter of the
mainland United States, experts said Tuesday.
The whitish
haze has been seen from Calgary, Alberta, to Arizona to Aspen,
where weekend levels of particulate - matter that reduces visibility
and
can cause respiratory problems - quadrupled from the previous
weekend.
Gene Feldman,
an oceanographer from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Md., said aircraft have been monitoring matter in the dust clouds.
"At one
time, this dust cloud was bigger than Japan," he said.
Russ Schnell,
director of observatory operations for National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration in Boulder, said the cloud will reach the East
Coast, but should dissipate in the next several days.
In late 1998,
scientists claimed to have documented the spread of industrial
pollution from China to the United States, where it caused pollution
levels as high as two-thirds of federal health limits.
"This
storm is a godsend to pollution researchers," Schnell said.
"People are finally realizing that what have been saying
for years is true. Pollution from Asia is being carried across
the oceans."
The two experts
said it was unusual for such matter to be so visible to the naked
eye. In Aspen, particulate levels measured 58 millionths of a
gram per cubic meter of air, compared with 14 millionths of a
gram a week earlier.
"We had
the same kind of haze when Mount St. Helen's erupted but the particulate
didn't come down to the ground level as much," said Lee Cassin,
director of Aspen's environmental health department.
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