Madrid Spain.- Cuban doctor Miguel Ángel Ruano Sánchez warned the residents of the island about the dangers to health that the contamination generated from the fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base can bring and warned that the regime minimizes its consequences.
Ruano Sánchez, a resident of Colombia and a member of the Free Cuban Medical Guild, reported that among the effects it can cause are aggravated asthma, reduced lung function, irritation in the respiratory tract, pneumothorax (collapsed lung), pneumonia, and pleural effusion (fluid around of the lungs).
“Highly toxic smoke poisoning from substances that have already been in the air for three days is particulate matter or PM 2.5, due to its diameter of even less than 2.5 micrometers, one ten-thousandth of an inch (less than the thickness of a human hair)”, detailed the specialist through social networks.
“PM stands for particulate matter (also called particulate pollution) – the term for a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets found in the air,” he explained.
“Particles smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter from hydrocarbon combustion pose the greatest problems, because they can reach the depths of the lungs, and some can even reach the bloodstream,” he added.
Miguel Ángel Ruano condemned the Cuban government for not referring to these serious consequences.
“The height of the disinformation of a Ministry of Health to its people. Murderers, they call concentration of ‘a lot of smoke’, zones vulnerable to a true environmental disaster of high proportion and seriousness”, she expressed.
The doctor also warned that the use of a mask, as the Cuban authorities have indicated, will not serve to combat this situation, much less the cloth ones used by most Cubans.
According to their statements, “the particulate material can even pass through cloth or other material masks.” He also indicated that “the N95 mask is the most appropriate tool to protect the body from inhaling contaminants in the environment, because it traps 95 percent of microparticles.”
Recommendations of the Cuban Government
Given the situation in Matanzas, the authorities recommended that the inhabitants of this province protect themselves from smoke and gas emissions by closing doors and windows and wearing a mask, as well as avoiding exposure to the rains.
“The rain recorded on Saturday in specific places in the north of the western region dragged acidifiers, soot particles and other contaminants to the surface, which is why, when collecting rainwater, some people observed a dark hue inside the containers” said Osvaldo Cuesta Santos, a specialist at the Center for Atmospheric Pollution and Chemistry, an entity belonging to the Cuban Institute of Meteorology (INSMET).
Despite the environmental catastrophe that the explosion has represented, scientific authorities maintain that there are no records of an increase in respiratory diseases in the West of the country as a result of gas emissions.
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