How Can I Breathe Fresh Air?

▲Fine dust is very bad in the fine dust alarm application.

 Have you heard "fine dust"? The expression will keep being repeated in Korea from winter to spring. Starting from November, you can see that fine dust or ultrafine dust is reaching its peak in the weather's alarm application. In the following paragraphs, there are more details about its causes and consequences on our health.

 The commonly used nomination for the problem is fine dust or ultrafine dust; even they are still not defined in the law. Fine dust (PM10) and fine dust (PM2.5) are respectively the dust whose size is under 10μm and 2.5μm in Framework Act on Environmental Policy — considering that PM is the abbreviation for Particulate Matter.

What caused the fine dust?

 There exist both external and internal causes of fine dust. The ministry of Environment's studies on modeling the atmospheric environment in Northeast Asia in 2004 predicted the external impact to be around 40 to 50 percent, while the National Institute of Environmental Research determined that 30 to 40 percent of fine dust concentration in the Seoul metropolitan area was due to the effect of a movement from China in 2006. Regarding the same topic, the Korean Air and Atmospheric Environment Association foresaw an external impact of at least 30 percent in 2008. In summary, these results are estimated to have an external effect of more than 30 percent. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Government data in 2010, the average emission source contribution of the receptor model can be is divided into emission sources and it is estimated that the second generation related to sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium is on average 32.26%, vehicle combustion is 14.85%, and fossil fuel combustion is 12.52%.

When will the fine dust start to matter?

 The problem of fine dust has already raised since the 1960s, and the first newspaper article that was written about air pollution was published in Kyunghyang Shinmun in 1962. In an article titled "The Contaminated Air Covering Seoul (1962.10.22)", the air pollution level of Seoul is as severe as that of London, and fine dust is cited as one of the pollutants. On the other hand, some experts assess that the level is has improved since the past years.

How does the fine dust affect our health?

 The World Health Organization defined fine dust as a carcinogen in 2013. Exposure of fine dust can generally cause increased respiratory irritation and disease, reduced lung capacity, worsening asthma, worsening chronic bronchitis, worsening heart rate, heart disease, myocardial infarction and lung cancer.   For every 10μg/m³ increase in fine dust concentration, the mortality rate of all diseases, heart and lung cancers increases significantly 4%, 6% and 8% respectively. Recent exposure to fine dust has been reported to affect the brain as well. The study found that exposure to fine dust affects the brain and accelerates cognitive aging. It also showed increased risk of Alzheimer's and dementia. The results also showed that dementia in female elderly people increased by about twofold from 12μg/m³, a standard of PM_2.5 by the U.S. Environmental Agency.

Jeong Ji Eun

<jje00227@kangwon.ac.kr>