Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Nov 16:371:m3089.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.m3089.

Health in dust belt cities and beyond-an essay by Nick Middleton

Nick Middleton  1
Affiliations

Health in dust belt cities and beyond-an essay by Nick Middleton

Nick Middleton. BMJ. .

Abstract

Desert dust is associated with morbidity and mortality, and distant spread means lessons for mitigating the harms can be found by looking beyond cities in arid regions, writes Nick Middleton

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: I have read and understood BMJ policy on declaration of interests and declare the following interests: In the past five years I have received fees for consulting on sand and dust storms from two UN bodies and reimbursement for attending a dust conference from inDust, an EU COST Action.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1
Major global sources of desert dust and pathways of long distance transport (Modified from Muhs et al, 2014).
Fig 2
Fig 2
Dust storm engulfs Khartoum Credit: Mahmoud Hjaj/Anadolu Agency
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Prospero JM, Ginoux P, Torres O, Nicholson SE, Gill TE. Environmental characterization of global sources of atmospheric soil dust identified with the Nimbus 7 Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) absorbing aerosol product. Rev Geophys 2002;40:2-1 10.1029/2000RG000095. - DOI
    1. Goudie AS, Middleton NJ. Desert dust in the global system. Springer Science & Business Media, 2006.
    1. Li J, Kandakji T, Lee JA, et al. Blowing dust and highway safety in the southwestern United States: Characteristics of dust emission “hotspots” and management implications. Sci Total Environ 2018;621:1023-32. 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.124 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Sarkar S, Chauhan A, Kumar R, Singh RP. Impact of deadly dust storms (May 2018) on air quality, meteorological, and atmospheric parameters over the northern parts of India. Geohealth 2019;3:67-80. 10.1029/2018GH000170 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhang X, Zhao L, Tong DQ, Wu G, Dan M, Teng B. A systematic review of global desert dust and associated human health effects. Atmosphere. 2016;7:158 10.3390/atmos7120158. - DOI

Publication types