HONOLULU — The Big Island has the highest rate of sulfur dioxide emission in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, a distinction established before this month’s toxic eruptions began pouring from Kilauea volcano.
Dr. Elizabeth Tam — chairwoman of medicine at the University of Hawaii medical school — found that the air pollution output from Kilauea was equal to one-tenth of the annual pollution for all of China.
Sulfur dioxide emission levels were “1,000 times greater than the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) definition of a major pollution source,” Tam’s team reported in the scientific journal Environmental International in 2016.
“It’s the volcano,” said EPA spokesman Dean Higuchi. “The volcano puts the Big Island highest in the nation for SO2 (sulfur dioxide) values.”
This was before the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Sunday issued a new air quality warning because of the erupting Kilauea volcano.
The warning is due to lava haze, which is created when hot lava comes into contact with cold seawater.
The contact produces a dense white plume of steam laced with hydrochloric acid and glass particles, which is now occurring on the island’s southeast coast.
Cathy Santy, a guest services representative at outdoor tour company Hawaii Forest and Trail in in Kailua-Kona, said she and two other colleagues were worried about the long-term effects of breathing sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and ash even before Kilauea began erupting May 3.
“A lot of us have headaches,” Santy said. “We’re just tired — muscle aches, headaches.”
Josh Green, an emergency room physician and Democratic state senator, said he treated several patients last week — from the Pahoa evacuation center to the opposite side of Hawaii island in Hawi — for symptoms related to the eruption.
Green said about one-third of the 150 patients he treated over three days complained of symptoms related to air quality.
But Green, who along with others at the University of Nevada, Reno, studied the health effects of breathing in the sulfur dioxide emissions, said the patients should be fine in the long term.
“We did not find there was a correlation to long-term lung disease,” he said. “But quality of life is affected very significantly if you have headaches, runny eyes, burning throat.”