Volcanic ash health concerns

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The World Health Organization warned today of potential respiratory problems for people who inhale particles of microscopic ash from Iceland’s volcanic eruption. Anchor Marco Werman talks to Stephen Spiro of the British Lung Foundation in London.

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MARCO WERMAN:  The skies over much of northern Europe are still closed to air traffic.  A vast cloud of ash from a volcano in Iceland continues to make flying too dangerous.  Hundreds of thousands of people are stranded.  We’ll hear from one of them in a few minutes.  First, the World Health Organization today urged people in the affected areas to stay indoors if the ash starts to settle.  Stephen Spiro is with the British Lung Foundation in London.  How a spokesman from the WHO said that inhaling particles of microscopic ash could cause respiratory problems.  How concerned should people be Stephen?

STEPHEN SPIRO:  Well at the moment we’re not too concerned.  The latest information is that the cloud is passing over between 20,000 and 30,000 feet above us.  It’s clearly in the flight path of jet airliners, but the sky over England, and in particular London, where I am is completely normal, bright blue and very clear.  And if there was a significant amount of the ash in the atmosphere, the sky would have a yellow tinge to it and we’re not seeing that at all fortunately.

WERMAN: Well let’s talk about people who are in the affected areas.  I’ve heard that the dust in this ash cloud is not just extremely fine, an expert on our program yesterday said it makes lady’s talcum powder look like gravel, but I’ve also heard that it’s basically glass dust.  Explain that and also, explain what that means for your lungs.

SPIRO: Well the dust from this volcano will be of all sorts of particle size.  The size that you inhale into the lungs would settle in the lungs, is about five microns in size, which is tiny.  The big particles that you might breathe in would give you itchy eyes, itchy nose and a sore throat.  And very, very fine particles wouldn’t even settle in the lungs.  You’d breathe them in and you’d breathe them out.  So it’s around the five micron ones we worry about, which are things like sulfur granules and some silica.  And there will be quite a lot of silica from the rock that constitutes this volcano.  But you have to inhale quite a lot of it and get it to settle in the lungs and already have lung disease for it to cause a problem.  So the people who one would be concerned for would be people with asthma and COPD, chronic bronchitis and emphysema.

WERMAN: But isn’t particulate pollution kind of the worst pollution to get in your lungs?

SPIRO: Well it depends on how much you inhale.  I mean for example, I was in Washington the year Mount St. Helens blew and that was such a big blast of volcanic ash that the sky turned from day to night and within 24 hours there was something like three or four inches of volcanic dust on the ground.  You could literally pick it up in handfuls and people with asthma and COPD were getting into trouble, no doubt.  But there are no long term effects like cancer or mesothelioma or anything like that has been recorded.  And the amount of exposure we’re anticipating from this volcano at the moment is trivial compared to that.

WERMAN: Now the volcano in Iceland, when it erupted two centuries ago, it went on for more than a year.  That’s got to be a consideration for human lungs if that kind of same scenario happens again.

SPIRO: Yes it would.  It all depends what happens to these fine particles when they land.  So what we can’t anticipate is how much would land in a particular place and for how long.  Clearly if there was major precipitation and it went on for several days, that would cause a significant potential health problem and people with lung disease in particular would be strongly advised to stay indoors and perhaps wear masks, but that is not the situation at the moment.

WERMAN: Stephen Spiro with the British Lung Foundation in London, thank you.

SPIRO: Thank you.

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