{"id":896,"date":"2026-03-19T14:43:55","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:43:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/bbc-sciencefocus\/?p=896"},"modified":"2026-03-19T14:43:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T14:43:56","slug":"deadly-fungal-storms-are-now-sweeping-the-us-and-spreading-a-disease-few-doctors-recognise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/bbc-sciencefocus\/2026\/03\/19\/deadly-fungal-storms-are-now-sweeping-the-us-and-spreading-a-disease-few-doctors-recognise\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadly fungal storms are now sweeping the US \u2013 and spreading a disease few doctors recognise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Earth<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deadly fungal storms are now sweeping the US \u2013 and spreading a disease few doctors recognise<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

And the problem is just getting worse<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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By Bill McGuire<\/p>\n\n\n\n

–<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

They called it Black Sunday. The most catastrophic dust storm in US history brought mayhem to six states, from Nebraska in the north to Texas in the south. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ferocious winds picked up an estimated third of a million tonnes of dusty topsoil and transformed it into a black blizzard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Residents of Dodge City in Kansas reported the arrival in mid-afternoon of a colossal inky cloud, some 200m high, that turned day to pitch-black night within seconds. As the sun was blotted out, the temperature plunged from 29\u00b0C into the low teens, and visibility reduced rapidly to zero. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The immense dust storm plagued an area of around a million square kilometres and took hours to blow itself out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its wake, it left wasted fields of destroyed crops and the bodies of livestock, half-buried homes and barns, and the dead \u2013 either suffocated outright or succumbing to dust pneumonia (pneumoconiosis) brought on by dust-choked lungs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Black Sunday storm occurred over 90 years ago, on 14 April 1935 and was emblematic of the so-called \u2018Dust Bowl\u2019, which left many destitute or homeless and brought devastation to huge tracts of the American prairie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, as dust storms become increasingly common in the US, some are wondering if it might happen all over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Deadly dust<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

During the 1930s, these dust storms could become deadly due to the sheer amount of dust they moved. It accumulated in attics and caused ceilings to collapse. The build-up of high-voltage static electricity in the storms was electrocuting people in their cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither of these are an issue today, but dust-related health problems, like the pneumoconiosis that took lives on Black Sunday, remain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

University of California researcher, Estrella Herrera, who works on the impact of dust on health, has found that hospitalisations can increase fivefold<\/a> after a Texas dust storm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBreathing in high levels of particulate matter floating in the air can lead to inflammation of different parts of the body and exacerbate a wide range of health problems a person may already have,\u201d said Herrera. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young children, the elderly, and those with pre-existing conditions, like asthma and bronchitis, are especially at risk from dust inhalation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finest particles can even get into the bloodstream and the brain, raising the risk of heart issues and strokes. In sub-Saharan Africa, just a 15 per cent rise<\/a> in the level of fine dust particles in the air has been linked to the infant mortality rate jumping by a quarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Woman
Masks and respirators can help people protect themselves from the deadly dust. Photo credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Worse still, dangerous bacteria or fungal spores can piggyback on dust storm particles, which can then spread them far and wide. Across the Sahel, south of the Sahara, high levels of dust are strongly correlated<\/a> with incidences of deadly bacterial meningitis, defining a meningitis \u2018belt\u2019 that stretches from Senegal in the west to Ethiopia in the east. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the US, there has been a huge uptick in occurrences of a fungal infection known as Valley Fever, and dust storms have been fingered as the cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The illness, which often presents similarly to bronchitis or pneumonia, can last for months and is sometimes fatal. Valley fever is endemic to the dry and dusty southwest, but it is being diagnosed increasingly often in other parts of the country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A number of pieces of research<\/a> have linked a rise in the occurrence of the infection with dust storms, suggesting that spores in the soil are picked up and dispersed far beyond their source, but there is, as yet, no robust evidence for such causality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, the hotter, drier, dustier conditions brought by global heating are widely thought to be playing a role in pushing up the infection rate across the whole country, which increased tenfold between 1998 and 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The illness is already claiming victims in Oregon and Washington state, and is predicted to spread to the Midwest and into Canada in the coming decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ground zero<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the heart of renewed dust storm activity in the US are the drought states of New Mexico, Arizona and Texas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, the city of El Paso in Texas experienced the most dust storms since the 1930s, following two years of record heat that resulted in the further loss of vegetation and soil moisture. This coincided with the country as a whole experiencing its windiest early spring on record. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the west, New Mexico endured 50 dust storms in 2025, one of which spawned a dust cloud that extended all the way to the east coast and into the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August of the same year, a fast-moving wall of dust slammed into Phoenix, Arizona, grounding flights and cutting power to 40,000 homes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When dust storms slam into cities like Phoenix, Arizona, it can cause widespread chaos. Photo credit: Getty<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Beyond the drought region, the midwest state of Oklahoma \u2013 once at the epicentre of the Dust Bowl \u2013 saw a combination of strong winds, dust storms and wildfire smoke lead, in March last year, to extremely poor air quality and the declaration of a state of emergency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there is no sign that things will improve. On the contrary, prospects for a less dusty future are poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new study<\/a> of past drought conditions across the southwest US, published in the journal Nature<\/em>, suggests that global heating could lead to them persisting to the end of the century and quite possibly far beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Timothy Shanahan, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, and a co-author of the paper, warned that: \u201cwater managers need to start planning for the possibility that this drought isn\u2019t just a rough patch \u2013 it could be the new reality\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read More:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n