Cross-strait conference to examine sandstorms

As sandstorms originating in Mongolia and northern China have become an environmental problem in Taiwan, the Cabinet's Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission is launching the first official cross-strait academic conference today in Taipei to seek strategies to deal with the problem.

"We hope that people can benefit from the academic exchange, which will help develop strategies to minimize the sandstorms' effects," Chien Shih-yin (錢世英), general-secretary of the commission, said at a press conference yesterday.

Chien said that the commission allocated more than NT$1 million last year so that researchers from four universities could go on field trips to Inner Mongolia to study the causes of the sandstorms. The researchers are also studying how to predict such storms and are developing strategies to minimize the storms' effects.

Liu Koung-ying (劉廣英), an atmospheric sciences expert at Chinese Culture University, said his experience in Inner Mongolia has shown him that vegetation on grazing areas was thin due to excessive numbers of sheep.

Although China has its own strategies to solve overgrazing problems, Liu said, Taiwan should focus on monitoring and predicting sandstorms.

Extremely dry conditions in the deserts of Central Asia and Mongolia trigger sandstorms in the winter.

In recent years, the sandstorms have become more frequent due to years of drought and the effects of overgrazing. Many of China's neighbors, such as South Korea and Japan, have become victims of the storms.

In Taiwan, sandstorms from China were first noticed in April 1988, when the concentration of particulate matter in the air increased dramatically.

Several air-quality monitoring stations recorded pollution standard index values between 201 and 422 micrograms per cubic meter.

According to the Environmental Protection Administration's (EPA) air quality classification, index readings above 200 indicate that air quality is "very unhealthy."

Liu Chung-ming (柳中明), an atmospheric sciences professor at National Taiwan University, said that researchers have sandstorm data for further analysis going back to 1993, when the EPA established 66 monitoring stations nationwide.

Liu analyzed data from these stations recorded between January and May this year and confirmed that the sandstorms impact Taiwan's air quality in the spring.

Last December, the EPA laun-ched a NT$10 million project to monitor the effects of sandstorms on the local environment and on people's health.

Chan Chang-chuan (詹長權), a public health professor at National Taiwan University, will present some of the results of his two years of research for the EPA at today's conference.

Data based on visits to emergency rooms at the National Taiwan University Teaching Hospital (台大醫院) and the Shin Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital (新光醫院) between 1995 and last year show that the number of visits by patients suffering from cardiopulmonary diseases increases when concentrations of particulate matter increase, Chan said.

At the two-day conference, Taiwanese researchers will exchange opinions with their counterparts from China on diverse sandstorm-related issues, including land-use planning, land preservation, desertification, atmospheric sciences, health and Mongolia's history.