The sandstorms that hit Inner Mongolia and the northern provinces of China on Sunday are not expected to affect Taiwan’s air quality in the next few days, the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) said yesterday.
Citing land observation data, Chu Yu-chi (朱雨其), director of the EPA’s Environmental Monitoring and Data Processing Bureau, said the sandstorms were small and had lasted for a relatively short period of time.
“Therefore, we believe the sandstorms will not have any significant impact on the air quality in Taiwan proper in the next two to three days,” Chu said.
Meanwhile, the air quality of the outlying islands of Kinmen and Matsu, both of which lie closer to China’s southeastern coast than to Taiwan proper, may be affected by emissions from China’s coastal industrial plants in the coming days, he said.
Chu said sandstorms tend to hit China more than 10 times a year on average, mostly between March and May, but only two to three of them are likely to affect Taiwan.
Because of the relatively low temperatures and high precipitation in northern China this year, there have been fewer sandstorms, he said.
The latest ones have not shown any signs of moving southward and the density of atmospheric particles in Taiwan has been within the normal range, Chu said.
Air quality will remain within normal levels over the next few days, he added.
In other news, the Atomic Energy Council (AEC) said yesterday that levels of iodine-131 in Taiwan after the release of radioactive material from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant in Japan have remained normal recently.
The AEC made the remarks after a report by the Chinese-language Apple Daily yesterday said that the council had stopped giving frequent updates of air monitoring results since April 10.
Wang Chung-der (王重德), head of the council’s Department of Radiation Protection, said the AEC had changed the frequency of its reports from every two to three days to every week because monitoring results had remained normal and stable from March 30 to April 10.
Wang said from April 1 to April 10, the AEC had identified iodine-131 in air samples, with the amount of radiation varying from 0.0002 becquerel per cubic meter to 0.002 becquerel per cubic meter. The council also detected cesium-137 at between 0.0004 becquerel per cubic meter and 0.001 becquerel per cubic meter.
“The overall trend has not gone through a drastic change and the radiation emitted from the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has dropped gradually,” Wang said. “We have only six workers and 10 pieces of equipment that are capable of analyzing food and air samples. We chose to devote more manpower to analyzing food imported from Japan — up to 200 items per day — because it is crucial to our daily lives.”
Additional reporting by Shelley Shan
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