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A thick plume of Sa­ha­ran dust has pushed air qual­i­ty to un­healthy lev­els in Port of Spain, Point Lisas and San Fer­nan­do.

The En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty (EMA) record­ed the lev­els at 8 a.m. to­day.

The dust has dri­ven up con­cen­tra­tions of par­tic­u­late mat­ter (PM), with the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex (AQI) rang­ing be­tween 164 and 177 at the af­fect­ed mon­i­tor­ing sta­tions. At these lev­els, the air pos­es health risks to every­one—es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble groups such as chil­dren, old­er adults and peo­ple with res­pi­ra­to­ry or heart con­di­tions.