A joint environmental monitoring program run by Taiwan and other countries on the Pratas Islands has found that air pollution is spreading further south than had previously been thought, according to results unveiled on Friday.
Chu Yu-chi (朱雨其), director of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) department in charge of environmental monitoring and information, said air pollution could spread very far, as seen in March when Taiwan was hit by sandstorms from China.
Not only was the air quality in Taiwan poor at that time, monitoring indexes as far away as the Pratas Islands — also known as Dongsha Islands (東沙群島) — located 450km south of Taiwan, also showed a marked increase in pollution, he said.
“We didn’t know that the sandstorm could spread so far south. This was a rare chance for us to get hold of the path of the storm,” Chu said. “It recorded over 500 micrograms per cubic meter of particulates, compared with only 30 micrograms at any usual time. The data will be a great help to future scientific research.”
The effort is a collaborative project between the EPA, NASA and several Southeast Asian countries to monitor environmental quality on the Pratas Islands.
“The program was the first time that the EPA has cooperated with NASA,” EPA Minister Stephen Shen (沈世宏) said.
Taiwan also worked with research teams from Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines, using high-tech air equipment to conduct a three-month air quality monitoring program.
Shen said a navy vessel transported equipment in February.
US equipment will be removed by the end of the month and when the monitoring vehicles will also be transported back to Taiwan.
He also mentioned that in order to monitor long-term environmental changes in the Dongsha Islands, the EPA has worked with Kaohsiung’s Marine Bureau to set up a working station on the island, which is solar-powered and the first green monitoring station in Taiwan.
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