Saturday 3 May 2014

Red sand from the Sahara

A few weeks ago a mixture of fine red sand and dust blew into Britain  from the Sahara.  It travelled thousands of miles before it landed and, within a few days, there were people complaining of grit in their eyes and warnings were put out for anyone with respiratory difficulties. Schools in affected areas were advised to keep children indoors during lunch and playtime.
Apparently, once lifted from the ground by strong winds, clouds of dust can reach very high altitudes and be transported worldwide, covering thousands of miles.  The U.K. met office gave an elegant description and put up a short video of the route the dust took..
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-weather/weather-phenomena/sahara-dust
I read that dust from the Sahara has been blown as far as Florida, five thousands miles away.
As usual, this set me thinking.
We know that the sand was there, because we could see it, feel it, cough it, sneeze it. It was definitely there. We also know that one of the ways radioactive particles can travel is in dust blown into the air and carried in the same way as the sand. We can't see them and we may not know that they are doing us any harm until years later, but there they are, hitching a lift in a dust storm and no passport control can keep them out.
This week Mochizuki posted in Fukushima Diary that 10,000,000 Bq of Cesium-134/137 are emitted from 4 crippled reactors every single hour
  http://fukushima-diary.com/2014/04/fukushima-prefectural-gov-shrank-fallout-survey-still-10-million-bq-of-cs-134137-emitted-from-fukushima-every-hour/
 I don't think that the radioactivity is just going to stay around Fukushima. Meanwhile, you can understand why some parents who actually live in the area are unhappy about letting their children play outside.
How do you find out about what's really happening to people affected by the nuclear power chain?  One way is from films. From May 14th  to May25th, the International Uranium Film Festival in Rio De Janeiro is showing films chosen from all those submitted, at the Modern Art Museum.
http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/ 
It's the place to go, but if like me, you can't get there, the festival has a  great website and, from past experience, once the films go up, you can learn a lot about them. They also have a good archive of films, and one of them is Abita  a short animated film about children who can't play outside because of the radioactive contamination. It's about their dreams and realities and you can watch it at this link.:
http://www.uraniumfilmfestival.org/en/arquives/films/462-en/past-iuffs/iuff-2013/usa-2014/new-york-city/sunday-feb-16/at-1-30pm/1121-abita-children-from-fukushimaI  
Abita is a beautifully told story, full of poetry and imagery. I just wish it hadn't had to be made.





No comments:

Post a Comment