MINERALS IN THE AIR

Mineralogists, petrologists, and geochemists do not typically reach for the skies when studying minerals except, perhaps, when threatened by a gigantic cloud of volcanic ash. It is during such events, for example, the April 2010 erup-tion of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull and the 79 CE eruption of Mount Vesuvius described by Pliny the Younger, that humans become aware of the potential impact of air-borne minerals. Similarly, major desert dust storms, such as those regularly engulfi ng cities in the Arabian Peninsula and the sea-sonal Kosa or Hwangsa storms in East Asia, draw our attention to the presence of minerals in the atmosphere. As previously discussed in Elements (Gieré and Querol 2010), atmospheric particulates may hav