Recently, every spring, both yellow dust and fine dust are getting increasingly more serious. In big cities, it’s hard to live without masks. There is even a joke which says we are already buying air to breathe because it’s necessary to buy masks to block the fine dust. It makes people uncomfortable because people can get diseases easily if there’s too much fine dust in the air. For example, people can easily get rhinitis by breathing in the bad air. Also,the increase of fine dust is even able to cause lung cancers. According to WHO, The World Health Organization, if the fine dust increases by 10 micrograms per cubic meter, the chances of contracting of lung cancer will increase by 22 percent. Centuries ago, yellow dust wasn’t a bad thing and there wasn’t fine dust, but these days they both are very bad because of industrialization. This means that we caused this problem, so we should be the ones to solve it. Actually, there are some groups currently trying programs to decrease fine dust. For example, there was a debate about decreasing fine dust made by cars. However, although the government starts such projects, if we don’t care about them, the projects won’t be able to work. So, we have to give attention to them and make an effort to decrease fine dust too.

Since there is lots of fine dust, people are complaining to the Minister of Environment. The Present Minister of Environment, Kim Eun-gyeong was asked about policies which should be completed with the cooperation of China to decrease fine dust. She answered, “We’re still trying to get cooperation from China.” She also said, “We made a plan to cut fine dust by 30 percent by 2022 and have been trying very hard. The citizens are complaining because they can’t see the change right now.” Just as she said, there are some policies currently being discussed to decrease fine dust, but people are still complaining. The people complaining usually say, “Those policies only restrict Korean people and aren’t aimed at China, the real cause of fine dust.” Also, the policies may cause problems in our society. A woman who has a child and lives in Seoul said, “I usually use my car to take my son to kindergarten. However, if a policy which restricts driving cars during the day or week is forced, I should use public transportation to take my son to kindergarten and to go to work. It’s impossible to get to work on time by using public transportation.”

A place where fine dust may bring serious problems will be schools because students’ respiratory systems aren’t as strong as adults’. Many regions are trying hard to protect children from fine dust and yellow dust. On Jeju Island where there has been a lot of fine dust recently, many schools are changing their schedules because of the fine dust. Already, many schools have changed field trip schedules or canceled them. Other schools’ students hardly had physical education class after the air got bad. Jeju Island hadn’t experienced fine dust until last year, so it may have caused people to be more cautious. There is another place where people are trying hard to protect children from fine dust. The Education Office of Daejeon even said that they are going to install air cleaners in every school in Daejeon. It is expected to cost 10 billion won. Also, they are going to build gymnasiums in every school by 2020 so that students will be able to have physical education classes even when the air is bad. There should be more measures against fine dust in schools.